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Facebook had the fastest-growing online video audience of major Web properties over the last 10 months, and is only second to Google in terms of video audience size, according to comScore data.
Google sites, which includes YouTube, still has a video audience that is more than twice the size of Facebook's.
But Facebook is growing, even as other large video sites stagnate. During April 2013, 63 million unique visitors watched a video on Facebook, which translates to growth of 18% over July 2012. In comparison, viewership on Google sites decreased 2% over the same time period.
Not surprisingly, Facebook is preparing to monetize its video content by serving ads to viewers beginning in July.
Twitter recently launched a video ad platform, but it only began building up a sizeable video library in January of 2013, when the company acquired startup Vine.
Mobile video is one opportunity that all these video platforms are certainly watching. Facebook's mobile app is seeing strong growth (56% year-over-year growth in mobile monthly active users), and we know that made-for-TV content does well on mobile devices.
However, comScore's video data only includes PC-based video views, and not mobile views. While there's overlap between mobile and desktop audiences, it's likely that each site will have a mobile-only audience that isn't accounted for in this data.
In any case, we expect Facebook and other social networks to move aggressively to tap video as a revenue stream.
NDN, a distributor of online news videos, was the fastest-growing online video property between July 2012 and April 2013.
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