Video Views

SPOTLIGHT: YouTube increases market share

Pete Wylie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:46:44 -0400

YouTube continued to widen its enormous lead in the online video space, claiming 49 percent of all online video views in July. Its eight closest competitors, like Yahoo!, AOL and Veoh, all lost fractions of their market shares to YouTube.

YouTube's share increased 1.8 percent from May and 8.1 percent from the same month last year.

The online video sharing site, purchased by Google last year, also increased its unique monthly visitor count. Looks like smooth sailing ahead for YouTube, especially after last week's favorable Veoh and Paramount court cases.

For more:
- see the metrics at seekingalpha.com

Obama leads in traffic, but McCain tops in video

Pete Wylie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:58:40 -0400

A comScore Ad Metrix release today shows Barack Obama, not surprisingly, way ahead of John McCain in online traffic. Obama's website averaged 91.7 million views per month over the first six months of 2008, compared to McCain's average of 7.4 million views. Obama's website also generated an astounding 244 million page views in June, up from 43.6 million in April and 149.9 million in May, showing a sustained increase in web traffic.

The only surprising result was McCain's large lead over Obama in video views on the site. McCain's videos were viewed, on average, more than three times as often as Obama. McCain averaged 2.2 million video views per month in the first half of 2008, and Obama's were viewed about 600,000 times per month.

McCain's introduction of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee should fuel traffic to even things up somewhat in the next couple of weeks, but Obama's base is younger and more technically savvy on an individual basis, which explains the discrepancy in numbers.

For more:
- see the comScore report here

Veoh Adds ABC & ESPN

Doug Mohney — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:18:45 -0400

Veoh Networks has announced it will be distributing full episodes from ABC and short-form online video content from ESPN.com.

Coming through ABC's broadband player, free access to full episodes includes such series as Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Jimmy Kimmel Live and Ugly Betty. Veoh expects to offer short-form programming from ABC later in the year through an embedded player. Sports junkies can get highlights of major sports events, clips from ESPN programs, and SportsCenter Right Now from an embedded ESPN video player.

Enhancements to ABC's online video player will be rolled out this fall, including true full-screen viewing, closed captioning and enhanced navigation and video search capabilities. The deal also enhances ESPN's online reach. In 2007, ESPN.com served up more than 1.2 billion video views and so far in 2008, fans are watching an average of 121 million videos per month.

Observers wonder what took ABC so long to work out a syndication deal with Veoh; CBS and NBC have been aggressively working on syndication for their properties.

Veoh currently lays claim to aggregating more than 100,000 content publishers, including CBS, Lions Gate, PBS, National Lampoon, Road and Track and US Magazine, and more than 28 million viewers as of late June.

Earlier this month, Veoh landed a new round $30 million in financing lead by Adobe and Intel. The company was one of six companies selected in mid-June by Warner Bros. to distribute TheWB.com.

For more
- Veoh adding ABC & ESPN shows announcement

Related articles:
Veoh Gets $30M From Intel, Adobe
Warner Bros. New Age Distribution Plan