video

Data show online video viewing is up, with YouTube.com leading the way with a surge of traffic from recent "news" events.

As online video takes the web by storm, several video sites have begun attracting millions of visitors each month, but YouTube.com seems to be generating the lion's share of media buzz.

During the mid-July G8 summit, for example, President Bush's now infamous shoulder rub of German Prime Minister Angela Merkel was captured in a five-second video clip that quickly made its way around the internet. The media pick-up is of little surprise since any story of interest at such a high-profile event would undoubtedly garner some degree of media attention.

But the coverage of the event marked a bit of a departure from typical news reporting, with headlines such as "Bush's Uninvited Massage Magnified in Cyberspace" and "Bush's Back Rub Huge Hit on Web" littering the news. In effect, reporters legitimized a story that might otherwise have been largely unnoticed by framing it in the context of what's happening across the internet. The main beneficiary of this exposure, of course, was YouTube.com, which received top mention in many of these articles, causing a surge in site visitation.

An analysis of category and site visitation builds a profile of YouTube.com visitors.

• In June 2006, YouTube.com attracted 13.4 million U.S. visitors, ranking as the 58th most visited site.
  
  
• YouTube.com visitors exhibit a wide array of interests online. Their web visitation suggests that they like to engage in various forms of media and entertainment, including music, gaming, humor, photos, blogging and, of course, video.
  
  
• The top categories frequented by visitors to YouTube.com include Gay/Lesbian (173 percent more likely than average), Humor (164 percent more likely) and Community/Teens (134 percent more likely).
  
  
• The top web properties visited by YouTube.com visitors include photo-sharing site Photobucket.com LLC (274 percent more likely than average), music network ARTISTdirect Network (245 percent more likely) and blog network Six Apart Sites (237 percent more likely). Video sites like Atom Entertainment (173 percent more likely) and Bolt Media (147 percent more likely) also ranked among the top 10.
  
  
• Visitors to YouTube.com are more likely to be male (57 percent) and they are also significantly more likely than the average internet user to be under 25 years old. Specifically, YouTube.com visitors are 54 percent more likely than average to be between the ages of 12 and 17, and 25 percent more likely to be between the ages of 18 and 24. 

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