News

US video streams reach all time high

Americans streamed a record 14.7 billion videos in April, according to Nielsen.

The April figure marks the most streams ever in a month. But while the number of videos streamed increased, total viewing time decreased during the period. There were 141.4 million unique US video viewers, who spent an average of four hours, 31 minutes viewing video online.

The top 10 video sites remained largely the same as the previous month, with only slight changes among the ranks. AOL Media Network and The CollegeHumor Network saw the largest month-over-month increase in unique viewers, up 13% and 11% respectively, placing them ahead of Hulu, which was the number six video brand in March. YouTube continues to dominate the rankings, with 111.2 million unique viewers, followed by Vevo (35.0 million) and Facebook (30.5 million).

YouTube’s usage in April was at an all-time high with 8.7 billion videos streamed, up 7% from the last month. New to the list of most heavily used sites with double-figure gains in streams from March were Dailymotion (+61%), AOL Media Network (+31%) and Megavideo (+25%).

Three of the top 10 most engaging video brands saw their number of video viewers more than triple their average time spent viewing video on the site. Ustream.tv and CBS Sports saw significant growth as video viewing time was up by 246% and 239%, respectively. Time spent viewing video on The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints was up 254%, due to Easter-related content.

Jenni Baker, London