Online video viewing clears three hours per month

People watching online video in the U.S. now watch more than three hours per month, according to new data from Nielsen Online.

In February, video usage was 169 minutes on average, but in March, it rose 13 percent to 191 minutes, Nielsen said.

Also growing fast: the total video streams viewed increased 9 percent from 8.9 billion to 9.7 billion. And the number of videos per user grew 7 percent from about 70 to 74.

Since the number of minutes per user is increasing at a faster rate than the number of videos per user, that means people are gradually moving to longer and longer videos--from 2.4 minutes in February to 2.7 minutes in March.

Google's YouTube continues to dominate the category, with 5.5 billion videos and 89 million people using the service in the U.S., Nielsen said. Hulu is in second place with 348 million videos and 9 million users. Yahoo is in third place with 232 million videos, but it's got more users than Hulu, about 25 million users.

[gboess82]

Does this take into account Netflix's streaming service? With Netflix, I watch about 1 streaming movie a week.

Recently (a week ago) I drastically reduced my cable lineup to the most basic service after becoming more familiar with Hulu.com and fancast.com. Many things people watch is on those sites, and if not there you can find it on the website of the channel (like Comdey Central) or even the show's website. You may have to wait a few days at most, but mostly they're on instantly and you can even watch past seasons.

[gboess82]

Flippin I just found that on history.com you can watch full episodes of many of the History Channel's series. And there are a lot from the Discovery Channel on their site too. What more could you want?

[Spartan_458]

I love Hulu. I'm glad to see that's it's doing so well.

[mailbox001]

3 hrs per month, thats how much I watch before lunch.

[mattfillmore]

I agree. For people who actually watch videos online, 3 hours a months seems rather low.

[Stammy12]

I have definitely increased my video watching online. I catch a lot of shows on Hulu and the like. Now that VUDU has YouTube built in I have been watching a lot of YouTube on my television which is awesome. But I agree 3 hours seems low.

I also think it would be hard to measure.

[reelseo]

Only thing is that Feb is a shorter month that March. If you look at Neilsen's info for Feb vs. Jan, you will see roughly the same in reverse.. Still good news.