Yesterday we reported that AOL leapt 5 spots to be the number 2 online video destination in March, according to ComScore Video Metrix.
Where people go to watch online video metrics is currently a more interesting statistic than search share because, whilst the top position rarely changes (it’s always YouTube), the other players shift positions quite a lot.
There is still a lot of opportunity in the industry as consumers are gradually shifting their viewing habits from terrestrial, satellite and cable transmission to online video. Content producers are also starting to take note by licensing shows to online only channels like Hulu, Netflix and Crackle.
Google saw some small gains for the first time since September, according to comScore’s March 2011 U.S. search engine market share rankings. Bing also continued its slow and steady growth, while Yahoo, Ask, and AOL saw less searches — with AOL and Ask both hitting new lows.
- Google search market share grew to 65.7 percent in March (up from 65.4 percent in February).
- Yahoo fell to 15.7 percent (down from 16.1 percent).
- Bing grew to 13.9 percent (up from 13.6 percent).
- Ask fell to 3.1 percent (down from 3.2 percent).
ComScore Video Metrix has just released the March 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings and the big news is that AOL Inc. now ranks #2 in total unique visitors behind Google Sites, which continue to rank #1. As Vice President Joe Biden would say, “This is a big … deal.”
First, let’s look at the numbers: According to comScore Video Metrix, 174 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in March for an average of 14.8 hours per viewer.
This is up from 170 million U.S. Internet users who watched an average of 13.6 hours per viewer in February. But February is a short month. Move along, nothing to see here.
Recently, The Nielsen Company reported that 143.9 million unique viewers in the U.S. had streamed online video in January 2011. A few days later, comScore Video Metrix reported that 171.2 million unique viewers in the U.S. had watched online video content that month.
As my mother would say, the difference between these two numbers is “bigger than a breadbox.”
But wait, there’s more.
According to Nielsen, YouTube was the top online video brand with 112.8 million unique viewers in January. Facebook was #2 with 32.3 million, VEVO was #3 with 32.2 million, Yahoo! was #4 with 25.5 million, MSN/Windows Live/Bing was #5 with 17.3 million, Hulu was #6 with 11.9 million, AOL Media Network was #8 with 9.2 million, and Fox Interactive was #9 with 7.6 million.
With SES London 2011 just around the corner, comScore today announced that 34.7 million Internet users in the U.K. watched 6 billion videos in November 2010. That’s an average of 173 videos a month per British viewer.*
During November 2010, nearly 964 million viewing sessions took place in the U.K., resulting in an average of 6 videos viewed per session. This is important because that Brits — like Yanks — snack on half a dozen clips a session.
Google and Bing made slight gains in October, while the other major search players saw their search market share drop, according to the latest comScore data.
- Google’s share of the explicit core U.S. search market grew to 66.3 percent (up from 66.1 percent in September).
- Yahoo fell to 16.5 percent (down from 16.7 percent)
- Bing grew to 11.5 percent (up from 11.2 percent).
- Ask.com fell to 3.6 percent (down from 3.7 percent)
- AOL fell to 2.1 percent (down from 2.3 percent).
(via Barron’s)
Yesterday, comScore released its Q3 2010 U.S. retail e-commerce sales estimates, which showed that online retail spending reached $32.1 billion for the quarter, up 9 percent versus year ago. This growth rate represented the fourth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth following a year of flat or negative growth rates.
So, if the digital world is humming right along, what does this mean for the analog economy? And more importantly, how does the analog economy impact the digital world?
comScore’s September U.S. search market share numbers are out. Google, which has dropped share or remained steady pretty much for the last year, made some slight gains. Meanwhile, Yahoo took a hit and Bing held steady.
- Google search market share grew to 66.1 percent in September (up from 65.4 percent in August).
- Yahoo fell to 16.7 percent (down from 17.4 percent).
- Bing grew slightly to 11.2 percent (up from 11.1 percent).
- Ask fell slightly to 3.7 percent (down from 3.8 percent).
- AOL held steady at 2.3 percent.
Yesterday, comScore released findings from comScore ARS research indicating the importance of strong creative elements in TV and digital advertising campaigns.
The findings show that creative quality drives more than half of the sales changes for brands analyzed, four times higher than the impact of the specific media plan involved.
“Through our copy-testing measurement, we are able to quantify the quality of a campaign and show a 0.90 correlation between ARS Persuasion Scores and changes in brand sales. Based on our years of research in this space, we’ve determined that the quality of the creative is four times more important than the characteristics of the media plan in generating sales,” said Jeff Cox, executive vice president of comScore ARS.
According to comScore, social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May 2010 versus 69.7 percent of men. This is just one of the highlights of a global report released today by comScore on women’s online usage entitled, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet.
Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development in a press release, “We have seen that women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online, such as strong engagement with social networking sites, but it’s also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption.”
