Online Video Numbers Hold Steady for April, Except at AOL

comScore released the Video Metrix a bit late this month and I've been quite busy of late so I missed it. Well I got a nudge from Mark about it and so here we are. If you've been following the saga you know that there was a dip in February but a resounding rebound in March to coincide with spring. Sure, numbers are a bit down in terms of viewers but up in terms of viewing. So let's dive into the pool and swim a couple laps.

Not sure where the swimming motif came from for today's article, maybe all the rain here in Milwaukee today. Yeah, I know, you don't care, get on with it already. Right, so, the numbers from comScore say that some 172 million Americans lapped up some online video last month and swallowed around 896.9 minutes each. That's enough to drown an elephant, if it were gallons of water I suppose.

The Top AOL Belly Flop - Video Content Views

Right, We all know that Google didn't lose the top spot, they're the biggest of the whales in the sea still but did lose about half a million viewers on the month and a few million sessions but picked up in the minutes per column. Still the King of the Sea. Meanwhile there's a feeding frenzy going on at VEVO as they gobbled up a couple million viewers and took the second spot from AOL who dove deep and ended up seventh, down some 17 million viewers from the previous month. Glub...glub...glub... Yahoo maintained an even keel in third but shed some ballast of around 3 million viewers. Other than that it was just some darting about for the others on the chart.

Swimming with the Sharks - Video Ads Viewed

Swim with the sharks and you're bound to get bit. Hulu is the major shark taking a bite out of our entertainment time to show us ads with another month of over 1.1 billion ads that totaled 470 million minutes, down from last month even though they only lost about 500,000 viewers month-to-month.

The next three were swimming in formation but Viacom and SpotX broke ranks while the bottom feeders outswam AOL who was overtaken by Crosspoint Media.

Overall there were about 500 million less ads on the month and the frequency of ads per viewer dropped (double backward somersault for joy!), even Hulu dropped it's FAV to just 45 from 47.1. Lightest ad load goes to Brightroll who had only 6.9 per viewer but a massive 22% reach, proving once again, that's the place to put your ads for the largest reach.

Other notable findings from April 2011 include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: Tremor Media at 47.1 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 40.1 percent and Break Media at 39.1 percent. But real reach was 19.6%, 22% and hmmm...Break isn't on the top ten.
• 81.9 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. Down 1.6%
• The duration of the average online content video was 5.2 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes. Same old same old
• Video ads accounted for 11.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.1 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online. down 1.1% and 0.1%

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