Google's YouTube Dominates Growing Online Video Use

The number U.S. Internet users watching online video inched up in May, as Google-owned YouTube remained the hottest destinations, showing 14.6 billion videos in the month, a research firm says.

Overall, 183 million Web surfers watched nearly 34 billion videos, with YouTube accounting for 43.1%, ComScore reported Thursday. For the first time, YouTube surpassed the threshold of 100 videos per viewer.

Ranking a distant second as an online video destination was Hulu, whose visitors watched 1.2 billion videos, or 3.5% of the total. Microsoft ranked third with 642 million videos, or 1.9%, followed by Vevo, 430 million, or 1.3%, and Viacom, 347 million, or 1%.

The overall number of online video viewers was slightly higher than in April, when 180 million U.S. Internet users watched video, according to ComScore. More than 135 million of those users went to YouTube, watching an average of 96 videos that month.

The Joost Video Network fed by the Adconion Media Group was the top video ad network in May, reaching 35.2% of online video viewers, lower than last month when Joost scored a 38% market share. BrightRoll was second with a 24.4% penetration, followed by Tremor Media, 21.2%, ComScore said.

Other notable findings in May were that 84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. YouTube's 144.1 million viewers watched an average of 101.2 videos.

Hulu viewers, on the other hand, watched 27 videos, totaling 2.7 hours per viewer. The duration of the average online video on the Web was 4.3 minutes, which was unchanged from April.