YouTube attracts over 100m viewers in US

100 million Americans can't be wrong: YouTube rules!
100 million Americans can't be wrong: YouTube rules!

It's official - one in every three Americans enjoys watching movie trailers, singalong home videos, reality TV catch-ups and 'hilarious' You've Been Framed accidents.

Online research company comScore today released January 2009 data from its Video Metrix service showing that US users viewed 14.8 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 4 per cent over December.

YouTube led the growth charge, accounting for almost all (91 per cent) of the gain and surpassing 100 million unique viewers for the first time.

Everyone loves YouTube

YouTube now accounts for over 40 per cent of all videos viewed online, serving 6 billion clips last month (that's a Google-eyed 62.5 videos per viewer).

Overall, around half of Americans watch videos online (both streamed and progressive download), racking up over 100 videos a month each - although the average length of clip was just 3.5 minutes.

Fox Interactive ranked second with 62.1 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (41.9 million) and Microsoft Sites (30.0 million).

We still reckon Hulu.com is one to watch - it may have attracted a 'mere' 24.5 million viewers, but they watch more videos than any other leading site but YouTube.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on total time watched (or bits served), as Hulu.com's time-shifted TV shows also tend to much longer than the average (from 20 to 50 minutes).

Mark Harris is Senior Research Director at Gartner.