YouTube stars as U.S. video viewers soar

Industry tracker comScore on Monday reported that U.S. online video viewing hit a record high in August with YouTube luring a commanding share of the audience.

An unprecedented 161 million people in the United States tuned into online videos during the month, with the total number of Internet videos watched topping 25 billion for the first time ever, according to comScore.

Google websites served up more than 10 billion of the online videos viewed by U.S. Internet users in August, with YouTube accounting for 99 percent of that count, comScore reported.

Google attracted 121.4 million viewers, each watching an average of 82 videos.

Websites operated by Google rival Microsoft placed a distant second with 547 million videos played by nearly 55 million U.S. Internet users in August, according to the tracking firm.

Approximately 539 million videos were viewed online at Viacom Digital and another 488 million videos were delivered by Hulu, comScore reported.

Nearly 82 percent of all U.S. Internet users watched videos online in August, with an average viewing time amounting to 9.7 hours, according to comScore. The duration of a typical video was slightly less than four minutes.