Yahoo! Video Becomes #2 Video Site -- Just Before Being Shuttered

Frank Watson reported earlier today that Yahoo! Video will close on March 15, 2011. A few hours later, comScore Video Metrix reported that Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in November 2010 with 145.8 million unique viewers. Yahoo! Sites took the #2 spot last month with 61.8 million viewers.

VEVO ranked #3 with 50.3 million viewers, followed by AOL, Inc., which ranked #4 with 47.7 million viewers.

Well, at least the people at Yahoo! Video can go out with their heads held high.

In other news, comScore Video Metrix reported that 172 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in November. This means 84.2 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

What does this mean to marketers? Well, YouTube is consolidating its position as the top online video content property. But the competition may also be shifting from other video content properties to the top video ad properties.

According to comScore, Americans viewed more than 5.4 billion video ads in November, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.1 billion. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 477 million ad views, followed by ADAP.TV (446 million) and Microsoft Sites (427 million). Video ads reached 49 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 36.8 times during the month. CWTV.com delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 68.5 over the course of the month after recently starting to run full ad-loads comparable to those of television.

It’s also worth noting that the duration of the average online content video was 5.1 minutes in November, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes. This is longer than a year ago — driven by more views of longer videos on YouTube, which increased it limit from 10 to 15 minutes of fame back in July.