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16.8 Billion Videos Viewed Online in April

Internet users view 16.8 billion videos online during the month of April (recently reported by ClickZ). That's a 16% increase over March and a 32% increase over the 12.7 billion who viewed video online in November 2008. Most were Youtube videos with durations around 3.5 minutes. Some attribute this to the slow economy generating more free time for users to kill watching videos (interesting to think that a slow economy could be generating things). I attribute the rise to a shift in the general viewing habits of internet users, technology improvements in content delivery, and the general improvement in the quality of online video content.

With this kind of exponential increase, it's a matter of time before online video is the standard for communicating ideas online. While obviating the necessity to utilize the medium, these numbers also represent the importance of quality, compelling, user-friendly content that stands out from the crowd.

Some other interesting facts from the report, which originated from a comScore study.
• 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 385 minutes of video, or 6.4 hours.
• 107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on YouTube.com (that averages out to 63.5 videos per viewer).
• 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on MySpace.com (7.9 videos per viewer).
• Hulu accounted for only 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but made up 4.2 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
• The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.

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