A survey run by traffic analysts, Hitwise, reveals that YouTube not only continues to lead the online video market, but has actually increased its market share, from 59.95% last May to 75.43% in May 2008. That is about 26% better than their performance last year.
In the process of improving their market share, they have indirectly helped Google Video, because they work together. By itself Google Video accounts for barely 4% share of the market.
YouTube’s positive growth has obviously occurred at the expense of other sites. Their nearest rival, MySpace, which commanded a healthy 16% of the market last year, has fallen to just about 9% this May, while even Google Video has fallen from 7.8% to 3.73% in the space of one year. Yahoo! Video, which was always a small player, holding only 2.77% of the market share last year, has fallen to just 1.92% this year.
In fact Veoh, which has the smallest market share in the top 5 category, is the only one other than YouTube, to have shown a positive move from 0.86% to 1.13% which is almost 32% better than their performance last year. This must be at least part of the reason why television network ABC have recently decided to enter into a distribution deal with them.
Further information from Hitwise shows that the total number of people visiting video sites has reduced by 9% compared to last year, and presently accounts for only 1.14% of all visits to the Internet. At the same time, those who do visit the video sites, seem to be spending more time there, as there has been an increase of 6% in the total number of hours that are being spent, watching online videos. 82% of YouTube clients, and 64% of MySpace clients, have been going back to the same site repeatedly.
Whether YouTube’s huge lead in the video market will stifle creativity and innovativeness remains to be seen.
