Hulu is Growing Faster than YouTube – Online Video Usage Trends For March

Mark R Robertson   |   April 13, 2009   |  

According to new research released from Neilsen Online, almost 10 billion (9.6B) video streams were viewed in March of this year by an estimated 130M US web users.  This represents almost a 40% (38.8) increase year over year from March 2008 and is an increase of 9% month over month from February 2009.  And…  there’s more…

Hulu Keeps Pumpin’

In February of this year, Hulu overtook Yahoo as the second most popular online video destination in terms of total video streams (308M for Hulu vs 250M for Yahoo).  That being said, Yahoo still had a much larger audience in terms of total uniques (24M for Yahoo vs. 9.5M unique viewers for Hulu).  When you look at the data for March, Hulu has maintained that lead and is now kicking more Yahoo butt when you look at total video streams (348M for Hulu vs 231M for Yahoo).  Yahoo does still have a 3 to 1 lead when it comes to uniques.

Finally, if you look at the growth in terms of videos streamed in March vs February of this year, you can see that Hulu grew 13% while Youtube grew 6%.  One month of data is really not conclusive but the growth rate for Hulu does seem to be on a roll.  I would bet that the Hulu TV commercials are helping with this.  Even my father, 65 years old told me that he now watches shows on Hulu after seeing the super bowl commercial with Alec Baldwin.

Video Sites Mar ‘09 Streams (000) Feb ‘09 Streams (000) % Var
Youtube 5,479,609 5,158,727 6
Hulu 348,520 308,806 13
Yahoo 231,795 250,425 -7
Fox Interactive Media 207,528 194,255 7
Nickelodeon Kids & Family Network 196,160 209,465 -6
ABC.com 176,931 187,128 -5
MSN/Windows Live 168,907 162,900 4
Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network 137,621 125,067 10
MTV Networks Music 123,888 100,076 24
CNN Digital Network 103,453 99,846 4

As a side note, it is interesting to see the tremendous growth at MTV and Turner…  Anyone know the reason?  Maybe had to do with anticipation of the 2009 MTV Movie Awards?

Here is the Raw Data from Neilsen for March

march09 videocensus Hulu is Growing Faster than YouTube Online Video Usage Trends For March

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Posted: in Research & Trends, Video Industry News
About the Author - Mark R Robertson
Mark Robertson is the Founder and Creator of ReelSEO.com. Mark has had extensive experience in online marketing, particularly in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Local Search, Video Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can follow Mark on Twitter @markrrobertson

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  • Not surprised really, Hulu is stepping up their game this time around. I remember a few months back most people didn't know about Hulu. Kudos to them!
  • Hulu certainly has exploded in the past year, and have pretty good TV commercials too, but are ultimately limited by the fact their vids can only be viewed in the U.S.

    For instance, Canada and the UK alone have a third of the US population (and FWIW, as of a year or so ago, Canada had a 10% higher broadband penetration and the UK was about the same as the US)... add in Japan and that's 3/4 the population - and I certainly seem to see a lot of Japanese vids in the top 100 on Youtube.

    So unless Hulu can go international like Youtube, then they're limited to only about a 20th of the world's population - albeit to one of the highest tech'd countries.

    - Steve
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