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Industry Trends

Yahoo! Video Jumps In Popularity

By November 4, 2008July 30th, 2023No Comments

Finally, the Yahoo! Team has something to smile about. According to the results of the latest survey conducted by Nielsen Online’s Video Census, Yahoo!’s market share of web video has increased substantially, in the month of September 2008. Their viewership has increased by a whopping 56%, and was around 264 million video streams for that month, compared to 169 million in the month of August.

Not only that, but they are now at the number two position in the market, next only to YouTube. They have beaten their other competitors, Fox (MySpace), MSN and Nickelodeon, who had all been ahead of Yahoo just a month ago, in August 2008.

The number of unique viewers visiting Yahoo has also gone up by 10 million, and now stands at 29.9 million.

YouTube is of course far far ahead of Yahoo, not only in the total number of video streams they run (5.3 billion), but also in the number of unique viewers they have (81.9 million). Also their business has increased in the month of September 2008 by 592 million video streams, which by itself is considerably more than double of Yahoo!’s total video streams in the same month.

In spite of this great difference in numbers between YouTube and Yahoo, it is possible that Yahoo may catch up with YouTube, faster than expected, where monetization is concerned, which is after all the bottom line for any business. The reason for this is that Yahoo can display ads alongside many more of its videos than YouTube. It has been estimated that currently, YouTube monetizes only about 4% of their videos according to The Wall Street Journal.

Another good news for Yahoo, is that while they saw a considerable jump in business in September, their other competitors, Fox, MSN and Nickelodeon actually saw a dip in their business.

Apart from good contextual placement, Yahoo!’s program “Primetime In No Time” is one of the major reasons for their progress. It allows viewers to see a synopsis

Of any of their favorite TV programs which they may have missed. This show alone has generated 100 million streams in September. Also the fan mash-up of the Shakira blockbuster “Hips don’t lie” has generated a lot of interest for a long time now.

Interest in the current economic crisis on Yahoo Finance, and information regarding the U.S. Presidential elections on Yahoo News is also growing and should grow stronger in October.