comScore released online video metrics today, which report that Americans watched 556 million hours of online video in July. Five. Hundred. Fifty-six. Million. Hours. In case you were wondering, that's 63,400+ years worth of online video consumed in one month!

If that's not enough eye-time to sell some advertising, who knows what is.

But that's exactly the problem that is dogging the industry right now. The most recent figures from eMarketer put online video ad spending at less than $600 million for 2008. Some quick math breaks that down to roughly a dollar per hour of online video content viewed. 30-second TV spots continue to cost into the upper six figures and beyond, so where is the disconnect with online video?

Everyone intimately familiar with the industry has heard the stock answers; fear of ads running alongside questionable user-gen content, viewer distaste for/avoidance of ad formats, and lack of ROI. The lackluster online video ad results for NBC's online Olympic coverage are a perfect example of monumental traffic, coupled with tepid ad sales.

But ad buyers should change their tune quickly as the number of viewers and videos viewed skyrockets. The same comScore figures indicated that more than 140 million Americans watched online videos in July, and, on average, they watched 82 videos each, or roughly four hours of content. YouTube led the way here, with five billion individual videos viewed for an average of 54 videos per user. Most of this content probably ran without ads, which will soon prove to be a major oversight. 

For more:
- see the full comScore numbers here [1] 

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