Video Consumption Up Heavily: comScore

The number of Internet users watching video online grew an impressive 18 percent between October 2005 and March 2006. That’s according to comScore’s first ever analysis of U.S. Web users’ online video viewing habits, drawn from its new Video Metrix service.

In March, U.S. Internet users initiated a total of 3.7 billion video content streams; and they watched an average 100 minutes of video content each during the month, compared with 85 minutes back in October.

Men initiated 52 percent of those streams, women 48 percent; splitting genders along roughly equal lines. But men spent far more time with the content, averaging two hours of viewing time during the month, compared with women’s hour-and-twenty. Not surprisingly, males 18 to 34 were most engrossed with online video, averaging 140 minutes of video consumption.

But while certain demographic sets consume more video than others, the report’s biggest surprise is that people from all ages and walks of life are eating it up, according to Erin Hunter, comsCore’s EVP of media and entertainment.

“There are skews by age, but there isn’t any group that’s not doing it,” she said. “It’s not just college kids. It’s also the older demographic, and clearly it’s males and females both. In terms of content, we see entertainment and sports and news all with pretty strong rates of viewership.”

Additional data from comsCore’s Video Metrix service includes that 16 percent of video consumption takes place during prime time hours, and 22 percent on the weekend. Forty-two percent of Web users watch video on an entertainment site, and about 33 percent watch on a portal. In a blow to human resources managers everywhere, the workplace is the favored environment for watching video. People spent about an hour a month watching from work environments.

comScore’s new Video Metrix service will provide customers with monthly reporting on the demographics and video consumption habits of U.S.-based Internet users, presenting interactions with both content and ads. The data are drawn from comScore’s existing technology and panel of 1.5 million Internet users, though the video data comes from a smaller subset.

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