Facebook #2 Site For Online Videos In India

Facebook videos gain popularity amongst Indian Internet users, even as the majority of still logs into Youtube to watch online videos.

Facebook has risen fast to second place with 6.6 million viewers in India watching videos on it during the month of January 2011. Viewers watched 30.1 million videos on the social networking site, according to Internet analytics provider comScore.

Short form video site Metacafe.com, which focuses on user generated videos, is in the third place with 3.9 million viewers. Indian properties Network 18 and Rediff.com India rank in the top ten largest video sites with 1.2 million and 861,000 viewers respectively.

The Google owned Youtube.com accounts for 44.5% of all videos viewed in India in the month of January 2011. There were 780.7 million users who saw videos on Youtube.

"Online video viewing is quickly becoming a central activity for Internet users in India," said Joe Nguyen, comScore vice president for Southeast Asia. "The online video platform offers advertisers and marketers the opportunity to reach audiences in an engaging environment, providing the potential for significant brand interaction and awareness building. As broadband penetration in India continues to increase, we expect to see online video continue to grow and become an increasingly important channel for marketers to reach audiences in the burgeoning Indian online market."

The set of Internet users analysed by comScore are aged 15 and older, and watch the videos from either home or work. Note: the firm has surprisingly not taken into consideration users who access the video sites from public computers such as Internet cafes or via mobile phones.

It offers that there were 30.2 million online users in India who watched online videos. This represents 72 percent of the total online population in India. An average viewer watched 58 videos during the month.

Compared to other countries, India has lower online video reach. In the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom and Singapore, over 80% of online visitors watched videos in January, this was 78.6% in Australia and 71.8% in India. UK averaged the most time watching online video at 18.3 hours per viewer during the month, followed by U.S. with 15.8 hours and Singapore with 10.7 hours. Viewers in Brazil and Australia exhibited the same viewer engagement at 7.7 hours per viewer during January, while viewers in India averaged 5.1 hours.

ComScore has a live webinar on The Rise of Online Video in India today between 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm.