Media

Video On The Web: Nothing Matters But YouTube

YouTube has become more and more each month, the Facebook of online video. The Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) site’s inventory of content which can be used to support video advertising dwarfs that on the balance of the websites which offer free video. This is similar to Facebook’s absolute dominance of display advertising inventory.

Data about which video sites were visited on the web in September reported by Comscore showed once again that YouTube has promise as a highly profitable business. Wall St. estimates are the YouTube had $800 million of revenue last year. The figure rose to an estimated $1.1 billion this year and should reach $1.7 billion in 2012. It will be hard for any other online video site to make a great deal of  money because none has YouTube’s scale

YouTube 161.4 million visitors last month. Its content generated 18.6 billion video views. Minutes per viewer were 378. Hulu, which has variously considered an IPO or sale of its operations, is a perfect example of the slight chances the balance of the industry has to build financial value. It has 27.1 million visitors and 642 million views. Minutes per viewer were only 180 for the month. Hulu may be able to sell a great deal of its video inventory, which it does not do now, and still would not be a large operations.

The situation is even more grim for the portal companies. As an example, Yahoo! video sites had 46.1 million unique visitors in September, 526.7 million videos view, and average minutes viewed of 49.4.

Douglas A. McIntyre

From Comscore

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties Ranked by Unique Video Viewers
September 2011
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Content Videos Only (Ad Videos Not Included)
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property Total Unique Viewers (000) Videos (000)* Minutes per Viewer
Total Internet : Total Audience 181,915 39,813,781 1,167.9
Google Sites 161,406 18,609,393 378.0
VEVO 57,348 748,163 60.2
Microsoft Sites 53,972 735,911 39.3
Viacom Digital 53,424 633,598 53.8
Facebook.com 49,891 252,521 16.1
Yahoo! Sites 46,104 526,745 49.4
AOL, Inc. 41,850 408,157 55.9
NBC Universal 29,772 95,518 15.3
Turner Digital 28,594 240,980 33.2
Hulu 27,051 642,405 180.3

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