AOL, CollegeHumor Get Biggest MOM Video Viewer Boosts

May 23, 2011

AOL Media Network and The CollegeHumor Network saw the largest month-over-month increase in unique viewers, up 13% and 11% respectively, among US online video brands in April 2011, according to data from The Nielsen Company. They placed sixth and seventh in the top 10 rankings.

MSN, CNN, Fox Lose Viewers

MSN/WindowsLiveBing was ranked fifth overall with 13.8 million unique viewers but still lost a leading 13.4% of its March audience. Other brands in the top 10 losing significant month-over-month viewership include #9 CNN Digital Network (-11.3%) and #10 Fox Interactive Media (-10.9%).
Perennial leader YouTube remained on top with almost 111.2 million unique viewers, although this represented a small 0.6% decline from March.

Mormon Site’s Engagement Rises for Easter

Three of the top 10 most engaging video brands in April saw their video viewers more than triple their average time spent viewing video on the site. Time spent viewing video on The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints was up 254%, due to what Nielsen says was Easter-related content. Ustream.tv and CBS Sports also saw significant growth as viewers increased their video viewing time by 246% and 239%, respectively.
Chinese video site Tudou.com engaged its US viewers for the longest average time during the course of the month, five hours and 32 minutes. However, this was down a significant 35% from March. Meanwhile, number two Hulu was close behind with an average of five hours and 10 minutes, although it lost 1.2% of its time average from the previous month.

YouTube Streams Hit All-time High

YouTube, the number one online video brand in terms of average streams per viewer, saw its usage hit at an all-time high in April as US viewers consumed 8.7 billion streams, up 7% from the previous month. Hulu followed with a little more than 760 million streams, although this figure was down 6.2% from March.
New to the list of most heavily used sites with double-digit gains in streams from March were Dailymotion (+61%), AOL Media Network (+31%) and Megavideo (+25%).

Total Streams Also Hit New High

During April, Americans streamed 14.7 billion videos, up 1.9% from March and the most streams ever in a month. While the number of videos streamed increased, total viewing time actually decreased during the period. There were 141.4 million unique U.S. video viewers who spent an average of 4 hours, 31 minutes viewing video over the course of the month.

YouTube Grows YOY Viewers 14%

Online video leader YouTube grew its total unique viewership a significant 14% from about 97.1 million in April 2010. In addition, total streams rose about 77%, from 4.9 billion.
Overall online video usage also generally increased, with total viewers rising 6% from 133.5 million rising 56% from 9.4 billion. Streams per viewer rose 47% from 70.5.