Number of U.K. Online Videos Viewed up 47 Percent Vs. Year Ago

Monday, July 6th, 2009
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YouTube Display Ads Reached 18 Million People in the U.K. During the Month

LONDON, U.K. — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service, indicating that the total number of videos viewed online in the U.K. in April 2009 grew 47 percent versus year ago to 4.7 billion videos. The report also found that 21.8 million U.K. Internet users viewed a total of 971 million online display ads on multimedia sites during the month, based on data from comScore Ad Metrix, a recently introduced service in the U.K. providing competitive intelligence on online display advertising.

Google Sites Leads U.K. in Online Video Viewership

Google Sites ranked as the top U.K. online video property in April with 2.4 billion videos viewed, an increase of 58 percent versus year ago, driven by the popularity of YouTube.com, which accounted for 99 percent of all videos viewed on the property. BBC Sites ranked second with 79 million videos viewed, followed by ITV Sites (34.7 million videos), Megavideo.com (31.7 million videos), and Microsoft Sites (30.2 million videos). Each of the top ten video properties experienced double-digit growth during the past year, while several saw their number of videos viewed multiply by a factor of two or three.

“With nearly five billion videos viewed in the U.K. in April, online video is a powerful and growing vehicle for online advertising placement,” said Mike Read, SVP and managing director, comScore Europe. “The online video market currently relies heavily on display ads for monetization, and in the coming months and years we can expect that video ads will play an even more prominent role. Despite the market’s overwhelming size and audience at this phase of the growth curve, it is also clear that we’re still in the early stages of advertising optimization and effectiveness in this increasingly important entertainment channel.”

18 Million People Were Exposed to a Display Advertisement on YouTube in April

Of the 36.8 million U.K. Internet users in April, 35.4 million (96 percent) were exposed to some form of display advertising, which includes static banners, rich media, and video ads. YouTube.com delivered display ads to the most people in the multimedia category, with 18.5 million visitors viewing a total of 621 million display ads. Metacafe ranked second with 1.6 million ad-exposed visitors, followed by WindowsMedia (1.2 million ad-exposed visitors) and MySpace Video (1 million ad-exposed visitors).

More: U.K. Online Video Rankings