August 2012 US online video rankings

Top 10 video content properties by unique viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in August with 150.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55 million, Microsoft Sites with 53.7 million, VEVO with 49.3 million and Facebook.com with 47.7 million. Nearly 37.7 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 13.8 billion, followed by AOL, Inc. with 725 million. Google Sites had the highest average engagement among the top ten properties.

*A video is defined as any streamed segment of audiovisual content, including both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, (e.g. television episodes with ad pods in the middle) each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream. Video views are inclusive of both user-initiated and auto-played videos that are viewed for longer than 3 seconds.

Top 10 video ad properties by video ads viewed,/b>

Americans viewed 9.5 billion video ads in August, with each of the top 4 video ad properties delivering more than 1-billion video ads. Google Sites ranked first with more than 1.7 billion ads, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 1.4 billion, Adap.tv with 1.2 billion, Hulu with 1.1 billion and SpotXchange Video Ad Marketplace with 911 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled 3.5 billion minutes, with BrightRoll Video Network delivering the highest duration of video ads at 717 million minutes. Video ads reached 54% of the total US population an average of 58 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 51, while Google Sites delivered an average of 19 ads per viewer.

Note: In addition to data changes resulting from the overall methodology improvements with August 2012 Video Metrix data, (see note below) the data for Hulu experienced a decline due to the refinement of tag collection mechanisms unique to it. As a reminder, comScore advises caution when interpreting month-over-month trends.
*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetisation, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, etc.
**Indicates video ad network
†Indicates video ad exchange

Top 10 YouTube partner channels by unique viewers

The August 2012 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channel VEVO (47.6 million viewers) maintained the top position in the ranking, followed by Warner Music with 24.8 million. Machinima drew 21.9 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios Inc. with 20.9 million and FullScreen with 18.9 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement (85 minutes per viewer) followed by Maker Studios (47 minutes per viewer). VEVO streamed the greatest number of videos (569 million), followed by Machinima (529 million).

*YouTube Partner Reporting based on online video content viewing and does not include claimed user-generated content

Other notable findings from August 2012 include:
• 87.3% of the US Internet audience viewed online video.
• The duration of the average online content video was 6.7 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 20.1% of all videos viewed and 1.4% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

A Note about August 2012 Video Metrix Reporting

With the release of August 2012 US Video Metrix data, comScore introduced three important methodological enhancements to our estimates that will affect data on a go-forward basis. The first enhancement is the incorporation of updated demographic universe estimates based on data from the 2010 US census, which provides an improved accounting of the percentage of the population falling into each demographic segment. The second enhancement is an improvement in comScore's enumeration survey methodology to better represent persons in cell-phone only households. The third and final enhancement is a new technique to account for cookie rejection in Safari browsers, for sites measured via comScore's Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) methodology. Due to the effects of the changes to the August 2012 US Video Metrix data, comScore advises caution when interpreting month-over-month trends.