Among the different ways of advertising through the Internet, video advertising is one which attracts the customers. Advertisers prefer to use online video ads to capture the right customers. Online video ads include display of actual moving video clips in place of the static or animated image. This creates an interest in the viewer to look at it. A comScore study stated that 4.6 billion video ads were viewed by the Americans in May 2011. As per the comScore Video Metrix, the online video ads included only streaming-video advertising. Other types of video monetization like branded players, overlays, homepage ads, matching banner ads and so on were not included.
The study revealed that the online video ads reached 45.4% of the total US population. The frequency of video ads viewed per viewer in May 2011 was found to be 33.7. Among the many online video properties viewed, Hulu stood first. More than 1.3 billion online video ad impressions were accounted by Hulu. Hulu video ads were found to reach 9.2% of the total US population. The frequency of ads per viewer for Hulu was about 47.6.
Following Hulu were Tremor Media Video Network which ranked second highest among the online video ad properties and the highest one among the online video ad networks. It accounted for around 700.8 million video ads. It was followed by Adap.tv (642 million), BrightRoll Video Network (565 million) and Undertone (291 million).
During May 2011, more than 2 billion minutes were spent in watching the online video ads. The highest duration of online video ads was accounted by Hulu which was found to be 560 million minutes. The comScore study also revealed that online video ads accounted for 12.6 percent of all the videos viewed (that included video content also), and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent on viewing online video. It can be reflected from the study that most of the Americans view online video ads through various video ad properties.