Just last month, we wrote that Hulu had gained some 10 million viewers to become the fourth largest video portal on the web. Now, it’s slain another rival to the list: Yahoo, to move into #3 — at least in terms of videos viewed.
To be clear, the new March U.S. numbers released by comScore show that Hulu is still slightly behind Yahoo’s video properties when it comes to unique viewers. But the NBC and Fox-backed Hulu should pass it any day now in that category as well. Meanwhile, the number two player, Fox Interactive Media (which runs MySpace), is slipping just as quickly as Hulu is rising in videos viewed. It could well be as soon as this month when Hulu moves into the number two web video position.
March saw Hulu stream some 380 million videos, up from 332 million last month. Its unique viewers rose from nearly 35 million to 41 and a half million.
Interestingly, both Yahoo and FIM are still making small gains in unique visitors to their video portals, but both are seeing those users watch less videos. Hulu, on the other hand, is seeing a rush of new users, and is seeing large gains in the total number of videos viewed. Obviously, this speaks well to the company’s monetization strategy, which relies on viewers to watch more videos and sit through their short, interlaced commercials.
Meanwhile, Google, with its dominant YouTube property, shows no signs of slowing down. It crossed a hundred million unique viewers in the U.S., according to comScore’s numbers. And it gained nearly 600 million videos viewed for the month. To put that in perspective, YouTube gained more in terms of videos streamed last month that any of its rivals streamed total.
Google now controls 41 percent of the online US video market (with YouTube consisting of some 99% of that), while FIM has just 3% of the market and Hulu rising to 2.6%. Currently, Hulu’s average of 9.1 videos viewed per visitor is only behind Google and Viacom Digital. And 9.1 videos per visitor is pretty impressive considering that a lot of Hulu’s content is long-form (TV shows and movies) versus YouTube more short-form content (which boasts a huge 59 videos per viewer).
With reports continuing to suggest that a deal to bring Disney (and its ABC content) on board with Hulu is imminent, Hulu should only grow faster going forward.
A billion U.S. uniques?? This country has grown!
heh, yup indeed. fixed!
Just messing with you, MG. I figured you’d catch it.
Gotta hand it to Hulu, they created a solid product, especially the branding.
I wonder how large of an impact those Super Bowl commercials had?
US population is around 300 million. I wonder how unique users are counted.
it. was. an. error. LBYP
Does Fox own a majority stake in Hulu? If so should Hulu #’s be folded into FIM numbers?
No, NBC, Fox each own 45% right now with Providence Equity Partners taking the other 10%. If Disney joins the fold — which is likely — NBC and Fox’s stake are likely to be cut.
Fairly certain FIM (a subset of New Corp) is just basically MySpace videos.
Thanks for clearing that up for me
Yea, new concurents in video niche, so thats great
Interesting to hear about the horse race, but it seems a little apples and oranges to me. I watch short clips on YouTube but entire TV episodes on Hulu. I realize they’re both video providers, but in my mind the services are very different. I am curious how popular YouTube’s new “Shows” tab will be. And how does iTunes compare? I find myself alternating between Hulu and iTunes for TV content.
It’s not surprising because it seems Hulu is doing everything right.
Egad!
How will YouTube fare on this news? Hulu to open up channels to independent publishers?
My two cents:
http://www.yout...TubeWatercooler
Is hulu like Youtube???
Hulu is kinda like youtube except you can watch tv shows, movies so a wider range of videos in comparison to youtube..
Does it give you the options to upload your own videos, or is it just TV shows??
Hulu is like TV on your computer, done correctly, organized, and excellent quality.
I wonder what the advertising revenue difference is.
I have to say, I dont remember the last time I went to YouTube for user-generated content. Most of the time, it’s for produced, copyrighted content.
Since hulu loves to give away content for free and no one has any qualms about it, maybe all new movies and music should also be available on hulu not just for viewing, but downloading? Hulu may have every episode of Family Guy and Alec Baldwin as a spokesperson, but do they have a skateboarding dog video clip? No. No recession in Silicon Valley http://iamned.com/blog/
Why?
I’d be interested in seeing the average length of the videos hosted on Hulu vs. YouTube. Typically, YouTube vids are shorter and thus multiple videos could be streamed in the same amount of time as a single video on Hulu.
I’d think you would need a “hours of streamed content” metric in order to compare the two fairly.
Question, does anyone have any thoughts about Live Video selling platform? where Sellers and buyers can interact as well???
I just checked the site traffic on compete.com and according to them, here are the stats for March’09:
YouTube: 73,570,587
Google Video: 13,835,025
Hulu: 6,660,809
Metacafe: 5,902,322
Yahoo Video: 4,186,009
Here’s the link:
http://siteanal...m+metacafe.com/
But the link might now work properly, so you will have to use the compare sites feature (free).
Regards,
Website Analyzer
(web.analyzer.001@gmail.com)
“become the fourth largest video portal on the web”
This is misleading, as new statistic is for US video portals. Chinese portals already have the US beat soundly on the total number of videos.
youku.com statistics for one day (4/4/09):
146,803,100 video views
1,253,850,000 minutes total view time
25,091,500 unique visitors
60,050 new videos uploaded
8,245,800 searches performed
Beat that America!
Youku.com only has 954,214 unique visitors bob. It is no where close to American video websites.
Try harder next time.
954,214 unique visitors? Per what? hour, day, month, year?? I just gave you statistics for one day on 4/4/2009: 25,091,500 unique visitors.
Unlike American companies, Chinese companies are actually making money: $1 billion revenue for Tencent in 2008, beat that Website Analyzer!
954,214 unique visitors in the month of March’09.
And to top it off, youku has a lot of copyright infringing material, specially movies that have recently released.
Unlike youku.com, US companies remove videos that are reported to have infringing material.
And population of a country also make a huge difference (China has the highest population, if you have forgotten).
Hi Web Analyzer -
I see that you got your 954K monthly uniques for Youku stat from Compete.com. Problem is, it doesn’t measure global Internet traffic (look it up!) as its panels don’t extend out of the U.S. I consult for Youku and while I completely understand your skepticism about some of the mind-bogglingly large numbers thrown around about traffic on Chinese sites, this statistic is off by orders of magnitude. We try to be quite transparent about numbers, and the ones cited for April 4 above are correct–numbers we published on our corporate blog in English.
At Youku we remove infringing material with alacrity, as soon as it’s reported to us by the IP holder. The material you’re talking about makes up a very, very small percent of video views. Youku licenses the vast majority of its content and works with hundreds and hundreds of license holders across Asia as well as the rest of the world.
Yes, China does have a larger Internet-using population (larger than the entire population of the U.S., according to a recent count that put it at 312 million), but of course China’s per capita GDP is what, less than a tenth of the U.S.’s, so I’m not sure what your point is.
Best regards,
Kaiser
Thanks for pointing out chinese YouTube seems you can watch Seinfeld on there http://bit.ly/Fuqvw and tons of other shows not yet available online yet.
What’s even crazier is that Hulu makes a lot more revenue than YouTube does.
indeed!
lol, thats a distance #2 spot. hahahaa.
Considering that I and a number of friends have started abandoning our TVs and cable since most of what we want is on Hulu or Netflix anyhow, I don’t think its long before Hulu completely overtakes Youtube in terms of viewership.
Youtube is a video tool, Hulu is a TV replacement. There are a lot more people out there that watch TV than use Youtube. TV watchers will eventually flock to Hulu and by sheer volume they will have the advantage.
I will be curious to see where those numbers go during the summer months when there will be a lot less new content from the broadcast networks on Hulu. Being that for many people it is simply a tv replacement, will there be a three month mass exodus? Sure, there are cable programs during the summer months (i.e. Daily Show, Rescue Me, etc) that will still drive regular visitors, but the bulk of the most viewed programs will be in repeat.
Why is http://www.veoh.com not mentioned anywhere in this article if they are number two. They only mention one and three. LOL.
quite a feat for such a new company! The one thing they need to realize, is that while they are #3 right now, they would be #1 guaranteed if they opened up internationally. Right now only Americans can view the videos which sucks.
Unless of course, comscore rating is based off unique US visitors, not combined totals.
It is great site we can see whole tv serial and it is time of competition Interesting to hear about the horse race, but it seems a little apples and oranges to me. I watch short clips on YouTube but entire TV episodes on Hulu.
I’d also love to see numbers around aggregate time spent watching videos on these sites rather than just video counts.
I believe the average youtube watcher spends only a few minutes, whereas hulu watchers tend towards watching for hours.
Maybe it’s time to stop watching TV.
Hulu would make a great replacement.
I’d also love to see numbers around aggregate time spent watching videos on these sites rather than just video counts.
mee too
but i think for those popular video sites have a big future and they will be wached even more
http://www.eddsstudio.info