Online Video Saw Record Month in July

Online video is going from strength to strength and, after a record month in June, it broke all previous records in the US in July as well. According to new numbers from comScore, more than half of the US population, 158 million people, watched a video online last month. The rise from the previous month isn't spectacular, a little over one million more, but it’s still the highest number ever recorded. And, as if one record wasn't enough, July 2009 was also the biggest month when it came to the number of videos watched, with a whooping 21.4 billion video streamed.

The biggest contributors to the two-billion rise in videos watched are Google sites, meaning YouTube, as users streamed a little over 1.3 billion more videos from the sites, going from 7.6 billion in June to 8.9 last month. YouTube, of course, still dominates the video market with an almost 42-percent share.

The rest of the chart is pretty much unchanged with the notable exception of video search engine Blinkx, which made a surprising appearance in June at number four, but is now nowhere to be seen. Hulu, on the other hand, has managed to recover from the slump in June, and has, in fact, seen a record number of videos watched reaching 497 million streams.

When it comes to the number of unique viewers, the figures are even clearer, with Google reaching 120.8 million of the total 158 million audience. Microsoft comes in at number two with 64.5 million visitors, followed by Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) with 51.8 million. The rest of the chart is made up of a closely packed group with small gaps between the sites. But the figure that really says it all is that of the videos each visitor watched, with YouTube users viewing, on average, 74 videos, while for the next in line, Viacom, the number drops to 19 videos.