Online video viewing on the rise

New market research shows a sizable jump in the online viewing habits of Americans.

Last November, Americans viewed 34 percent more online video compared to the same month in 2007, according to a press release from ComScore. Thanks to YouTube, Google was the juggernaut of online video providers, taking a 40.3 percent share of all videos viewed. Fox Interactive Media, which owns MySpace, came in second with a 3.5 percent share.

That’s not too surprising, but it does reveal something about people’s online viewing tendencies. YouTube, after all, only recently started to experiment with full-length TV shows and movies. This checks out with ComScore’s conclusion that the average video watched online is merely 3.1 minutes long.

So, it seems the trend of watching full television shows and movies on sites like Hulu hasn’t quite caught on. The average duration for videos viewed on the site was 11.9 minutes — higher than any other site in ComScore’s top ten list. After surging in October, Hulu held steady this month with a 1.8 percent share of videos watched.

There’s plenty of room for Hulu to expand, though. Like YouTube in its early days, Hulu is still somewhat of an undiscovered gem, and if it continues to climb in popularity, it’s sure to carry the concept of online full-length TV shows and movies along with it.

Here are a couple other factoids of interest from ComScore’s report: 77 percent of Americans watched online video in November, with an average of 273 minutes for the average viewer.