The ComScore figures for May show that online video is back on track, after a couple of wobbly months. YouTube enjoyed an especially good period, while Hulu had a somewhat mixed month with views up but viewers remaining static.
ComScore May 2010
I think it’s safe to say online video is established. The new ComScore statistics for online video viewers show that 183 million people in the U.S watched online video during the month of May. That’s 84.8 percent of all Internet users in the U.S.
rose once again, proving how popular music videos are on the Web. While Facebook, becoming an increasingly important player in the world of online video, broke into the top 10 content properties with 245 million videos viewed on the site.
The two most interesting stories of the month, however, involve YouTube and Hulu.
YouTube All-Time High
Sitting pretty at the top of the stats as always is YouTube. But May 2010 was a particularly good month for the Google-owned site (and June’s going well so far too).
YouTube’s 14.6 billion videos viewed is a new all-time high for the site. And with those videos being watched by 144.1 million viewers, the videos-per-viewer threshold of 100 has also been broken. Each YouTube user watched an average of 101.2 videos during May.
YouTube is head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of every stat you wish to mention, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Hulu Viewers Flatlining
Things aren’t looking so rosy for Hulu. Sure, it came in second behind YouTube, and video views (of 1.2 billion) are up on April. But, as noted by Business Insider, the number of viewers has flatlined for around a year.
This means each Hulu user is watching more videos, but the service is not attracting any new users. Which must be rather worrying for joint owners NBC, Fox, and ABC.
Maybe this is the real reason the subscription package supposedly named Hulu Plus is on the way. Loyal users are likely to sign up and pay for their Hulu addiction, while the free service will still be there to (hopefully) attract new users.
