April Video Rankings: Unique Viewers Drop Slightly to 186M
The number of unique online video viewers in the United States dipped slightly to 186.1 million in April, down from 187.9 million the month before. The list of the top ten video content properties is again headed by Google (which owns YouTube), Facebook, and AOL. AnyClip Media, not a regular to the top ten, took the seventh spot, while Blinkx failed to hold onto the spot it took in March.
The big story this month is in how comScore presents the rankings. The measurement specialist has decided to slim down what it offers in its press announcement. The video content top ten used to include columns showing the number of videos that each property streamed for the month and the average number of minutes watched per viewer. Those are now gone from the press announcement. No doubt they're still included in the full comScore Video Metrix, which is available for a fee.
comScore's list of the top ten video ad properties has likewise been slimmed down. Now, entrants are ranked by the percent of the total U.S. population they reach, while columns showing the number of ads streamed, total ad minutes, and ad per viewer frequency are gone. This is bad news for Hulu, which streams a lot of ads, but only reaches a small percent of the population.
"Our data is pretty valuable. We always have to watch the amount of data we share to the public because our clients pay for this," says Adam Lella, a marketing insights analyst for comScore. "We felt it was the right time to trim it down."
Sometime in the next month or so, the comScore site will gain an interactive element that offers a visual look at the video rankings, but it won't include more data than is currently in the press announcement, Lella says. He added that mobile video measurement should start later in 2014, but didn't know about connected TV measurement.
The comScore rankings were already of limited value, since they only look at desktop viewing, but this latest change makes them almost not worth reporting.
Related Articles
AnyClip.com joins the content video top ten list for the first time, while AOL loses its number one ad spot to LiveRail.
21 Apr 2014