The total number of people that consumed online video during the month of January 2007 reached almost 123 million in the U.S., about 70 percent of the overall American audience, according to comScore's Video Metrix Service.
For the month each individual user watched 59 streams - almost two a day - while viewing approximately 151 minutes of video on the Internet for the month. The average time spent watching each video was 2.6 minutes.
The majority of video was consumed during the 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. time period on weekdays - encompassing 60 percent higher viewing than normal.
The top site for January was Google (GOOG), which had 54.7 million unique viewers and 1.167 billion videos streams started. That includes YouTube and Google Video together. By itself, YouTube had 992 million videos initiated.
Because we're online 24/7, I don't see the times of viewing that important, as it basically coincides when people start to watch their nightly television shows on the weekdays. What's more important for online marketers is the time spent watching mentioned above, of 2.6 minutes each. That confirms other data that I've seen that shows about 3 minutes being the average.
I would definitely keep my online marketing videos somewhere close to that range. Like anything else there are exceptions and it depends upon the purpose; like when some online marketers have successfully used 25 pages of ad copy to promote their products. But overall, I'd still stay close to the approximate 3 minute average shown.
If we're promoting higher-priced products, maybe longer video would work similar to longer, written ad copy. That's something that I personally haven't tested yet. Is there anybody out there that has faced that situation and could shed some light on it?
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