Hitwise data shows overall visits to video search sites up 164 percent.
Video sharing site YouTube saw the most traffic among video sites, accounting for 43 percent of category visits for the week ending May 20, 2006 and ranking at number 42 among the more than 500,000 sites tracked by Hitwise. YouTube's market share of visits has increased by 160 percent in the last three months (week ending May 20, 2006 versus week ending February 25, 2006), keeping it well above MySpace Videos, which saw an increase in market share of 3,825 percent during the same period. Other rapidly growing sites in the category in that period were Grouper (up 765 percent) and Daily Motion (up 300 percent).
Online video tied to social networking
YouTube, as both a video viewing site and social networking site, allows users to create their own profiles, post videos and comment on each other's posts. Social networking giant MySpace provided more than 20 percent of YouTube's traffic in February and March, before MySpace widely launched its own video sharing service by placing a "videos" link on every profile page beginning March 31. For the week ending May 20, 2006, 1.5 percent of MySpace's traffic went to MySpace Video, compared to 0.34 percent to YouTube. However, YouTube's average session time for that week was 13 minutes 20 seconds, nearly three times greater than MySpace Video's average session time at four minutes 41 seconds, demonstrating a high level of engagement between YouTube's content and its visitors.
"The rapid growth of online video sites in the past six months demonstrates a major shift in online behavior" says LeeAnn Prescott, senior research analyst at Hitwise. "The internet is quickly moving from static web pages to an environment rich with interaction and user-generated multimedia content."
Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories. By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation. Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.