The average American watches nearly 18 hours of video a month

If you remain unconvinced that video is the future of just about everything, take this latest research into consideration. The latest stats from comScore found that the average American spent nearly 18 hours this past February watching videos. That is an increase of nearly 50% over last year. In addition, video ads saw a viewing jump of over 150% over the previous February.

 In this past February alone, Americans watched nearly fifty billion online videos, up from thirty-three billion last year. That’s right, fifty billion. In addition, almost ten billion video ads were watched by the average American in February.

 Apparently, according to comScore, about 85% of all Americans who venture online are watching some manner of video presentation. Video is becoming so dominant that many major corporations are buying up these young and successful media companies because they, too, recognize where the future of online is headed.

•  YouTube continues to host some of the top video channels in the world. VEVO comes in at the top with 36.4 million unique viewers with Maker Studios coming in a close second with 30.3 million viewers. Maker was recently bought by Disney for a cool $500 million. In third place at YouTube is Warner Music with 26 million followers.
• As reported, video ad viewing rocketed up over 150% from this time last year with comScore reporting that Americans watched nearly 25 billion video ads this past February. Believe it or not, AOL took the top spot by running 3.2 billion, that’s billion, ads. Combined Google websites ran 3 billion video ads with the number three spot being taken by LiveRail who ran 2.9 billion ads in February. BrightRoll Platform was next with 2.6 billion followed by TubeMogul who ran 2.4 billion video ads.
• With regard to the top video content sites overall, Google’s assorted properties led the way with 152.8 million viewers for February. Much of this unique viewer dominance was fired by YouTube. Second place, with 9.1 million unique viewers was Facebook. Coming in third was AOL at 63.4 million followed closely by Yahoo with 49.7 million unique viewers in February.

 The numbers, it seems, are simply staggering. Video has begun a scorched earth policy that does not look to end anytime soon, So, if your marketing guru’s are not talking about how they are going to integrate video content into your marketing strategies, it may be time to get some new marketing guru’s.