UK online video stats: Youngsters favour C4 and ITV over BBC

Google Sites Most Popular Online Video Destination in U.K.

Driven by the popularity of YouTube.com (which accounted for 99.6 percent of all videos viewed on the property), Google Sites grew 17 percent versus a year ago to further solidify its position as the leading online video viewing property in the U.K., with 2.5 billion videos viewed in February 2010.

BBC Sites ranked second with 140 million videos viewed on its sites followed by Megavideo.com with 53 million videos.

Facebook ranked as the fastest growing video property in the top 10, surging 205 percent in the past year to 43 million videos viewed.

Blinkx was the second fastest, growing 204 percent to nearly 29 million videos viewed. BBC Sites (up 143 percent), ITV sites (up 134 percent) and Sky Sites (up 139 percent) also achieved triple-digit growth rates over the past year.

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video. Growth for Top 10 Sites not fastest growing sites within category.

 “The U.K. online video market continues to soar and is attracting a greater and greater share of Internet users’ attention,” said Mike Read, SVP and Managing Director, comScore Europe. “In particular, we’ve seen eyeballs move towards the online channel to watch more long-form, professional video content, such as popular broadcast network TV shows. This trend presents a significant opportunity to advertisers, as comScore research has consistently shown that online video advertising is effective at building brands.”

Channel 4’s Young Audience Consumes Highest Number of Videos per Viewer

The online video viewing audience at the sites of the U.K.’s leading TV stations exhibit significantly different skews by age and gender.

While the BBC’s video viewing audience tends to be male (index of 110) and spread between the ages of 25 and 54, Channel 4 skews heavily toward the 15-24 year old age group with an index of 154.

The site was visited evenly by males and females but women watched five more videos (21.7) then male viewers on the site during the month.

ITV Sites had the least appeal to males (index 84) and captured a larger proportion of female viewers of all three sites (index 119).

*Composition Index = % of Viewers at a Site from a Particular Demo Segment / % of Total Internet Population from the Demo Segment x 100; Index of 100 indicates average representation.

Source: www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

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