Nielsen Switches Online Rankings to Streams From Unique Viewers

By Daisy Whitney

Nielsen Online has changed the way it ranks and measures online video destinations, a shift that essentially demotes all the popular viral video sites other than YouTube and favors big media destinations.

Nielsen now measures online video by the top 20 online video brands as ranked by streams rather than by unique audience for video-sharing sites.

The measurement firm made the change because it has rolled out its new VideoCensus tool, which measures individual video streams served across Web sites.

Nielsen said streams is the default for VideoCensus, in order to focus on sites with the greatest traffic. However, it still can provide rankings by unique viewers or duration of use if desired.

YouTube remains dominant under the new system: It delivered 2.9 billion streams in February. Fox Interactive Media was second with 406 million streams, followed by Yahoo with 245 million streams.

Rounding out the top 10 were MSN, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, Google, Disney Online, Turner Entertainment, ESPN and AOL.

In December 2007, Nielsen Online ranked the top 10 video-sharing sites as follows:
YouTube, Google Video, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, Metacafe, Break.com, Crackle
Veoh, Brightcove, Spike and FunnyorDie.

(3:49 p.m.: Added fourth paragraph)