Michael Jackson’s death and related events has drawn the most online buzz in Internet history. News of his death on June 25 broke daily records, capturing nearly 8 percent of all conversations on the web. Buzz surrounding Jackson’s July 7 public memorial (which drew 31.1 million TV viewers) ranks as the third most-discussed topic online ever at more than 3 percent of conversations and early data for July 8 indicates that yesterday’s traffic record may already be eclipsed by today’s ongoing discussion. The one other event to …

Nielsen Online today released overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for May 2009.  Compared to the same month in 2008, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 percent growth in time per viewer.
Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)

 
May-09
Year-Over-Year
Month-Over-Month

Unique Viewers (000)
133,797
12.8%
14.7%

Total Streams (000)
10,043,049
34.8%
6.2%

Streams per Viewer
75.1
19.6%
-7.3%

Time per Viewer (min)
188.7
48.9%
-8.3%

Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus

 Note: Includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising. 
YouTube was far and away the top online destination by video streams, with more than 6 billion total streams during …

YouTube continued to rank as the No. 1 video Web brand with 5.5 billion total streams in April. Meanwhile, Hulu continued its explosive growth trajectory, increasing 490 percent in total streams year-over-year, from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009, making it the fastest growing brand among the top 10.
“Historically short form, clip-length video has ruled streaming on the Web—as demonstrated by YouTube’s top spot month after month,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media & analytics, Nielsen Online. “Hulu, along with pure-play providers like Veoh and …

Brandon Eshman, Nielsen Online
If you think the internet can support unlimited content and you’ve been enjoying your all-you-can-eat web surfing… just wait. At the same time that consumers are increasing their use of the internet to view content at their convenience, some cable companies and ISPs are setting limits on how much content you can access in any given month – or risk paying a penalty for going over the limit the same way your phone company budgets your anytime minutes.
Comcast has levied a 250-gigabyte cap on its users, (that’s …

Nielsen’s analysis of online video viewing habits in March shows that more than 9.6 billion streams were viewed by an estimated 130 million web users. In total streams, the figure represents a nearly 9% jump over the previous month, and 38.8% increase over figures released for March 2008.
YouTube, hulu, and Yahoo! were the top three sites for streaming video, serving up more than 6 billion video streams among them.

Manish Bhatia, President, Advanced Digital Services, Nielsen
Any physicist will tell you energy can neither be created nor destroyed — just changed from one form to another. Much the same can be said these days about television viewing.
Life used to be so simple – one screen, three national broadcast networks and a handful of local TV stations in every market. What’s more, all stations “signed off” sometime after midnight, leaving insomniacs with nothing to watch until morning but the once iconic test pattern. Then along came cable, considerably expanding …

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 …