October U.S. online video rankings from comScore reaffirm an established trend: Watching video online is a social exercise. Fueled by YouTube’s stranglehold on unique viewers, viewing sessions and minutes per viewer, Google posted dominant numbers, besting its closest competitor — Yahoo sites — by almost 93 million UVs and 1.7 billion viewing sessions. In total, YouTube accounted for 37 percent of all viewing sessions, with viewers averaging a staggering 271.6 minutes, or 4.5 hours, for the month.

Facebook, while seeing slight declines from September, still ranked fifth in total UVs with more than 47 million. That number gave it a larger viewer base than AOL, Microsoft and Fox Interactive Media.

Hulu, while tenth in UVs, placed third in minutes per viewing. The online video joint venture also served up the most video ads (4.6 billion) and enjoyed a robust 34 ads-per-viewer ratio. Google finished tenth in total video ads, even as it practically monopolized the viewing public.

All told, 84 percent of the U.S. Internet audience watched online video in October, and 45 percent of the total population was exposed to video ads.

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In July, BIA/Kelsey projected that OTT homes — or those services providing linear and nonlinear video services over third-party bandwidth to the TV — will exceed cable homes by 2013. A February IMS Research report on “Internet Video to the TV” pegged 78 percent global growth in OTT devices, with 25 percent of American households able to display Internet video on TVs.

After a flurry of new releases and partnership agreements, device makers, middleware companies and content providers are catching up to — and justifying — these forecasts.

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