Nielsen Ratings Shake Up – Hulu and Blinkx

Christophor Rick | August 14, 2009 | 1 Comment, Leave yours

After months of not a lot of movement going on at the top of the Nielsen reports for video traffic we suddenly get some major shake up and a new contender. The top ten saw some major moves from top to bottom last month which could pave the way for further change. Plus a dark horse that is lurking in the shadows ready to pounce it would seem.First, at the bottom of the top ten we see Blinkx sneaking into the mix. Absent from the top ten up until now Blinkx, the video search engine if you’ve forgotten, has breached the top ten with just over 86 million streams for the month and a strange 268,000 unique viewers. Apparently each of those viewers is watching roughly 320 streams each per month or about 10 per day.

Meanwhile up at the top Hulu has snuck into second place (recently having slid up to third) with 383 million streams and 10 million unique viewers for an average 38.3 streams per viewer. Just above looms YouTube larger than ever having once again shown massive growth topping 7 Billion (no, no typo there) streams for the month. Those streams went out to about 104.5 million unique viewers meaning that each averages 67 streams over the course of the month.
Apparently, Blinkx users are hardcore online video consumers since they’re watching an average of 5-10 times more streams per month per viewer. Even Nickelodeon Kids & Family viewers are only averaging about 26 streams per and Turner Sports and Entertainment is holding down 22 per unique viewer.

Now remember, Nielsen relies on user surveys and panels and as far as we know has not implemented direct tracking on any of the sites in their top ten. They state that July saw a 14.20% growth over last July and a 1.2% growth over the previous month in regards to unique viewers and a 31.4% and 11.1% growth in those categories in regards to streams.

Somewhere outside the top ten is ABC.com who, according to Nielsen has crushed NYTimes.com and FOXNews.com this past month by surpassing both of them. Last month over 16 million unique viewers hit the site. That’s more than hit many of the top ten sites including Nickelodeon, Turner, Hulu, MTV and Blinkx. They must have served less than 86 million streams for the month to not have made the top ten. Is this a glimpse into the coming months as viewers head to the network sites to catch up on the last episodes of last season before the new seasons begin kicking off next month?

Nielsen also states that around 212 minutes were consumed per viewer and the average overall was 82.4 streams each. Apparently Blinkx really tipped that scale.

Wrapping up the top ten:

YouTube
Hulu
Yahoo!
MSN/Windows Live/Bing
Nickelodeon
Turner
Fox
MTV
CNN
Blinkx

Stay tuned viewers as we find out if ABC can topple the top ten giants and breach the highest level of online video streams in August, the month historically leading up to all the new seasons.

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