U.S. Internet viewers watched record 42.6B videos

The average Internet user watched 21.1 hours of video content online in October

The Internet is about to edge out television, as my major medium of video entertainment, and it looks like it's going that way for many other Americans, according to a new study out Monday.

The digital measuring group comScore released the October numbers showing that 184 million Americans watched an average of 21.1 hours of video content online each -- that totals 42.6 billion videos.

This marks an all-time record for online video consumption in the U.S. and points toward greater growth for video creation, distribution and (the money-maker) advertising online.

Google Sites (mostly thanks to YouTube.com) kept a strong hold on the number one spot with more than 160 million unique viewers and an average of 7.1 hours (of viewing) in the month of October per person.

Second was Facebook with nearly 60 million viewers averaging 18 minutes of watching per person -- a stark drop-off in the time spent viewing video content from the number one spot.

The sites that held viewers for the longest time, thus showing the greatest potential for those valuable advertisement dollars, were Google Sites, VEVO, Hulu, Viacom Digital and Yahoo Sites.

The study also found that Americans viewed 7.5 billion video ads in October, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions -- more than 1.3 billion.  Hulu is known for its strong video content contracts with the NBC Universal line-up including popular shows such as The Office and Parks and Recreation. Hulu has shown in past months, as well as in this October study, that it has a smaller audience, but one that is devoted to watching more content on the site.

Tremor Video ranked second in ad impressions, and crossed the 1 billion mark for the first time, reaching 21.2% of the total U.S. population. BrightRoll Video Network came in third with 756 million.

Video advertisements touches 53% of the total U.S. Internet population, while video content reached 86.2% of the Internet audience.

On YouTube's rapidly growing and evolving partner channels, VEVO topped the chart with 54.2 million viewers and an average of 66.1 minutes of content watched per viewer. Warner Music followed with 30.4 million viewers and just less than half an hour of watching. The gaming channel, Machinima, held strong in the third positions with 17.7 million viewers -- and the second longest engagement time of 65.1 minutes.

From these findings, marketers should also know that the average duration of online video content was 5.5 minutes and the average advertisement was 0.4 minutes -- and video ads made up almost 15% of the videos viewed online and 1.4% of the time viewing online video content.

Image Source -- Swampcityproductions.com