Is TV Dead? Online Video Watching On The Rise.
And while Google sites remain far-and-away the leading Web site for video viewing (thanks to its YouTube site), Comscore Video Metrix found that Hulu.com is rapidly gaining popularity and for the first time ranked among the top three U.S. online video properties.
Nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 97 videos in March -- working out to an average of 5.5 hours of online video -- for a total of 14.5 billion videos, according to Comscore Video Metrix.
The number of videos watched represented an 11 percent gain from the 13.1 billion videos watched in February. But February was a shorter month. The total number of videos watched online in the U.S. in January reached more than 14.8 billion, a winter month when people spend more time trapped inside and, presumably, surfing the Web.
Google sites accounted for more than 5.9 billion, or 40.9 percent, of all watched videos (with YouTube accounting for more than 99 percent of those). Fox Interactive Media was second with 3.0 percent of all watched videos (437.1 million).
Fast-rising Hulu was ranked third " up from fourth in February and sixth in January " accounting for 2.6 percent of all watched videos (380.1 million). Those Hulu ads that portray actor Alec Baldwin as a brain-eating alien must be paying off.
Rounding out the top 10 video-viewing sites in March were Yahoo sites, Microsoft sites, Viacom Digital, CBS Interactive, Turner Network, Disney Online and AOL.