Online video viewers decline as summer begins

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The number of unique US visitors to YouTube and other video sites throughout June declined according to market insights company Nielsen which attributes the declining numbers to the beginning of summer and the school holidays.

A Nielsen study into online video consumption looked at the unique visitors to the ten following online video destinations - YouTube, VEVO, Facebook, Yahoo!, MSN/Windows Live/Bing, The College Humor Network, Hulu, AOL, Media Network, Netflix and CNN Digital.

The study found that throughout June the total number of unique visitors in United States to all online video sites in June decreased by 1.7 percent when compared to May.

All of the ten video sites surveyed experienced a decline in unique visitors with the exception of the College Humor Network which experienced a 23.2 percent increase in unique visitors.

Of the sites surveyed YouTube attracted the largest number of unique visitors, though the site still experienced a three percent month-on-month decrease in unique visitor numbers.

Nielsen attributes these declining month-on-month viewers to the beginning of the summer months and of the summer holidays which in America typically commence around the second or third week of June.

YouTube's position at the top of the online video viewing world was reinforced by data from Experian Hitwise which found that the site accounted for one-in-five of visits to all websites in April by UK internet users. In addition despite the proliferation of other video sharing sites and social networks, the same Experian Hitwise report found that the site was also the fastest growing social network in the UK.