Online video reaches 34m UK users
Online video reached 34 million UK internet users, representing 80% of the total UK internet audience, in January 2012, according to the comScore Video Metrix service.
Google Sites ranked as the leading video destination with nearly 30 million unique viewers. An analysis of online content video and video ad viewers showed that 64.1% of the online video audience was exposed to a video ad, with the 15-24 age group representing the largest video ad audience in terms of both unique viewers and engagement.
34.2 million UK internet users saw a total of nearly 8.4 billion videos for 58.8 billion minutes in January. While the size of the UK online video audience has not grown in the past six months, the number of videos viewed has grown 28% while the total time users spent engaging with online video grew 42%, suggesting that online video viewers continue to become more engaged over time.
For online video content, Google Sites ranked as the top property with 29.9 million unique viewers who watched nearly 3.7 billion videos for more than 15.9 billion minutes. YouTube videos accounted for 99.5% of all videos watched on Google Sites. Online music video destination VEVO ranked second on the list with 11.7 million unique viewers watching 177 million videos for 820 million total minutes. Rounding up the top three was social network Facebook, which attracted 8.3 million unique viewers who viewed 45.0 million videos for a total of 162 million minutes.
21.9 million UK internet users were exposed to a video ad stream and 33.3 million UK internet users watched a content video in January. A demographic analysis revealed that males were far more engaged with content videos, accounting for 74.7% of all time spent watching them compared to just females who only accounted for 25.3%. When it came to video ads, the gender split was more even with males accounting for 56.4% of all time exposed to ad videos compared to 43.6% for females.
15-24 year olds represented the largest age segment for content videos with 6.3 million viewers, while 4.6 million 15-24 year olds were exposed to video ads. People in this age bracket also spent the greatest amount of time engaging with content and ad videos, accounting for more than a quarter of time spent in both cases. As younger age demographics become more difficult to reach via traditional media channels, online video represents an important channel for reaching and engaging this particular audience.