(19 April 2008 2:00 pm)

MUMBAI: comScore which measures the digital world, has released February 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service.

This indicates that US Internet users viewed more than 10 billion online videos during the month, representing a three per cent gain versus January (despite February being two days shorter) and a 66-per cent gain versus February 2007.

In February, Google sites including Youtube once again ranked as the top US video property with nearly 3.6 billion videos viewed (35.4 per cent share of all videos), gaining 1.1 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 96 per cent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.

Fox Interactive Media which operates MySpace ranked second with 586 million videos (5.8 per cent), followed by Yahoo! sites with 293 million (2.9 per cent) and Microsoft sites with 293 million (2.9 per cent).

Nearly 135 million US Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes per person viewing online video in February. Google sites also attracted the most viewers (81.8 million), where they spent an average of 109 minutes per person watching video in February.

Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (55.7 million), followed by Yahoo! sites (37.1 million) and Microsoft sites (27.1 million).

ABC.com attracted the tenth largest viewing audience, and its viewers exhibited heavy engagement, averaging 51 minutes of online viewing per person.

72.8 per cent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. 80.4 million viewers watched 3.42 billion videos on YouTube.com (42.6 videos per viewer). 50.2 million viewers watched 539 million videos on MySpace.com (10.7 videos per viewer). The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes. The average online video viewer consumed 75 videos.