Brandon Eshman, Nielsen Online
According to the old saying “content is king,” right? But what if a combination of content and convenience are ultimately what attract consumers? It’s no secret that media today comes in many easy-to-access formats: video, music, TV, podcasts, etc., at the palm of our hand. Consumers have the ultimate choice in what they view and when they choose to view (or participate with) the content. The convergence of traditional viewing habits and the web is inevitable, as evidenced by the popularity of Hulu, …

Nielsen’s analysis of online video viewing habits in October shows that more than 5 billion video streams were viewed by almost 83 million YouTube users throughout the month.
Fox Interactive Media followed with 244 million streams and almost 18.5 million viewers. 
Hulu jumped from seventh place in September (142 million streams; 6.3 million viewers) to claim third place in October, with more than 206 million streams and 9 million viewers.

ONLINE BRAND
TOTAL STREAMS
 (in 000s)
UNIQUE VIEWERS
(in 000s)

YouTube
4,762,883
76,746

Fox Interactive Media
278,375
16,053

Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network
223,044
6,935

MSN/Windows Live
205,018
12,035

Disney Online
171,249
10,341

Yahoo!
169,259
19,659

ESPN
123,123
5,827

Hulu
107,622
2,632

CNN Digital Network
106,383
8,111

Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network
87,441
3,892

Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus
Note: Online brands are ranked by video streams; data includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in Ad Age.

Has the era of the DVD passed? 
Today, the likes of Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Veoh, and Hulu are betting it has.  Instead, they’re throwing their resources into developing a new video source: online streaming movies.
These new media titans may have the right idea, according to recent research by Nielsen that found online streaming video usage almost doubled in the U.S. between 2006 and 2007.  A separate survey conducted by Nielsen in 2007 found that 40% of respondents had streamed some type of video, while just over 10% had downloaded a …