YouTube has passed a milestone after more than 100 million Americans viewed at least one clip during January. And to show how popular online videos have become, the average US user watched more than 100 clips.

According to Web monitoring firm comScore, just short of 15 billion clips were viewed across all online video sites during the month. Of these,  42.9 per cent were on Google-owned sites (virtually all of them on YouTube.) That’s more than 10 times the second-ranked video provider Fox.

The overall figure is up 4 percent on December, and YouTube alone is responsible for 90 percent of that increase. It’s figures such as this which explain why Universal is keen on using YouTube to power its planned premium music site.

While the results give a good idea of trends, there may be a significant margin of error in the overall figures. For example, the study claims the average viewer watched 62 clips, the average clip is 3.5 minutes, and the average viewer spent six hours watching clips during the month – figures which don’t appear to add up.

Although the rest of the list of busiest sites is mainly made up of the usual suspects such as Yahoo, Microsoft and Hulu, Hong Kong based Megavideo is a surprise entry at number 10. The key to its success is explained by figures showing that, unlike the 3.5 minutes overall average, the average length for a Megavideo clip is 24.9 minutes.

If you’re thinking that means the site is a haven for illegally uploaded content such as TV shows and movies, you are probably right. Although you won’t find such material through the site’s own search engine, other sites use it to host pirated material including recent Oscar nominated films in their entirety.

Related:

Entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 2:34 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by John Lister.
Stumble It!