Online video stats – long form content is doing well

Novermber 2008 data just out from Comscore and reported by NewTeeVee and Broadstuff, amongst others, shows that in the US online video consumption was up 34% from Nov 07-Nov 08 at 12.7bn video views.  The number of unique viewers grew at only 6% to 98m – roughly flat as a percentage of the US internet population.  The November Comscore 2007 data is here.

To my mind these are decent, but not fantastic growth figures (although Google’s increase in market share from 31% to 40% by share of videos is impressive).

More interesting is that hidden in these stats is evidednce that consumption of long form content is starting to grow quickly.  The following leapt out for me:

• Hulu came from nowhere in November 2007 to sixth in the rankings in November 2008
• The length of the average video rose from to 2.8 to 3.1 minutes
• It looks like Hulu drove most of the increase as the average length of their videos was 11.9 minutes

As long form professionally produced video starts to go mainstream other ancillliary opportunities will open up – most notably around search and discovery.