US online video usage grows 45% in January

Online video usage in the US is up considerably from the same time last year as time spent viewing video on PC/Mac/laptops from home and work locations increased by 45 percent, according to a study by Nielsen. Although the number of unique online video viewers only increased by 3.1 percent from last January, level of activity was up as viewers streamed 28 percent more video and spent 45 percent more time watching. Total video streams also saw significant year-over-year growth, up 31.5 percent to 14.5 billion streams. January saw newcomers to the top ten most popular US video brands with music and entertainment site Vevo and video rental site Netflix entering at number three and number nine, respectively. Still a relatively new site, Vevo is showing signs of potential with over 32 million unique video viewers during the month, fewer than 100,000 viewers behind Facebook. MSN/Windows Live/Bing was the fastest-growing video brand month-over-month, increasing 26.1 percent to 17.3 million unique viewers. Netflix also saw notable gains in video viewers, increasing 15.6 percent from December 2010. Among the ten most heavily used brands in January, YouTube continues to hold the top position with nearly 8.5 billion video streams, 10 times the number of streams than its closest rival, Hulu. YouTube and Hulu are followed by Vevo in total streams, with MTV Networks Music (+79.1%), Netflix (+37.5%) and MSN/Windows Live/Bing (+36.3%) showing the strongest month-over-month growth in streams. When looking at the most engaging video brands as measured by time spent Netflix was the top destination as the average US video viewer spent over 11 hours watching video on the site from home and work locations. Similar to overall video usage in January, 7 of the 10 most engaging video brands also saw double-digit increases in average time per viewer. US video viewers nearly doubled their time spent viewing video on Veoh, spending 2 hours, 16 minutes on average in January. Justin.tv also saw notable growth as US viewers increased their video viewing time on the site by 56 percent from last month.