Super Tuesday Boosted Online Video Market in February

The Writer’s Strike may have put a damper on online episodes of America’s favorite TV shows, but it certainly didn’t hold back the country from checking out video coverage of the primary election during the Super Duper Tuesday month of February.

While traffic to online TV episodes and related video was essentially flat at the major portals in February, unique viewers at news and politics sites like CNN and MSNBC took a sharp increase with a historic Super Tuesday, balancing out at 5.3% average growth for the Top 10.

The exception was AOL, which just started streaming episodes from all 4 broadcast networks on February 14th. Unique video viewers at AOL were up 19.7% versus the prior month.

Video viewers at Time Warner’s CNN grew 16% while MSNBC enjoyed a 22% increase as visitors tuned in to catch the latest on the hotly contested presidential primaries. (MSNBC is a 50/50 joint venture between NBC and MSN, with traffic attributed accordingly.)

Meanwhile some online video startups are nipping at the heels of the Top 10. There’s been phenomenal growth of video on the web over the past year. Here is just a sampling of the Fastest Movers, ranking by percentage growth in February of this year vs. 2007.*

• GodTube.com tops the list, with supernatural growth since launch in Spring of 2007.
• VBS.tv, Jack9.com, Current.com and Rocketboom.com are sources of originally produced content. These so-called “broadband studios” are producing innovative and, in some cases, exclusive content that has captured loyal followings.
• ExpertVillage.com, VideoJug.com and Instructables.com are geared around instructional videos. They are quickly creating a treasure trove of content and communities around the frequently occurring “how-to ________” search query.
• Veoh is the only site to make it into both the Fastest Growing Sites and Top Video Competitors.

*Note that sites launched after February, 2007 (for example, funnyordie.com and 5min.com) were not considered in this analysis.