People Watched 11 Billion Video Ads In June

Sites include Hulu.com , YouTube.com . Published on August 13th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

It looks like online video hasn’t turned out to be the pain that TV advertising has been for people. Somehow the online medium has bred a tolerance for ads.

Proof of this lies in the fact that in June of this year alone, people watched over 11 billion video ads. That was a whopping 25% of all content viewed over the internet and represents a stunning growth in both viewership and engagement.

People in the US of course are prime targets for any form of advertising and true this principle, Americans accounted for a big chunk of the views on video ads. In all there were 4.6 billion minutes of video ads viewed by over 180 million internet users in the US.

Of course the ultimate beneficiaries of this boom in video ad views are the video networks themselves. Leading the charge among all comers is Google. Its YouTube platform delivers 99% of all its video content and only BrightRoll, a cross platform server of video content was able to challenge Google. Hulu, the premium content streaming service came in third but still led the field in terms of video ad frequency. Hulu serves up a massive 52 video ads per person.

Video advertising is still not mature and there are many players in the space who are yet to find their rhythm; when they do viewers will have more ads to watch and at far greater frequencies. Only time will tell if this will irk people and turn them off from online video ads.