comScore: Time Spent Watching Live Web Video Up 650 Percent

comScore has just released some telling stats about the massive growth of live streaming video over the web. According to the analytics company, over the past year, the amount of time American audiences spent watching video on the major live video publishers (Justin.tv, Ustream, Livestream, LiveVideo, and Stickam) has grown 648% to more than 1.4 billion minutes. Of course, video consumption on the web has grown generally—U.S. audiences watching YouTube and Hulu increased 68% and 75%, respectively, over the same time period. comScore says that even though live stream viewership still represents a fraction of the total time spent watching online video, it does indicate that viewers are increasingly looking for live streams on the web.

While live online video sites don’t have nearly as much of an audience as static video sites, the live video sites have been able to keep their audiences more engaged for a longer period of time. For example, the average live streamed video view is 7% longer than the average online video view.

Live video could also be good news for advertisers looking to target demographics via video advertising. Live video sites are 72% more likely to deliver the demographic, males age 18-34, than the average online video site. In fact, males age 18-34 comprise almost 30% of the total live video viewing audience on comScore’s sample sites.

In particular, comScore says that Justin.tv, Ustream, and Livestream have all grown significantly in terms of viewership over the past year. In July, Ustream reached more than 3.2 million unique viewers, with Justin.tv reaching 2.6 million and Livestream 2.4 million. Livestream, however, served more than 160 million videos, compared to roughly 130 million from Justin.tv and 20 million from Ustream. Vut those 20 million videos on Ustream were viewed eight minutes longer on average than videos on Justin.tv and 17 minutes more than those on Livestream. In terms of total minutes, viewers logged nearly 900 million minutes watching Justin.tv in July, outpacing the other two sites.

The growth in live streaming viewership isn’t particularly surprising. More and more viewers are looking to their computers and mobile devices for live video content as players like Ustream and Justin.tv provide a platform for these events. Justin.tv just released and Android app that allows you to broadcast video live, and an iPhone app is in the works. And Ustream has already released a similar Android app. Ustream has raised a whopping $90 million in venture funding, and CEO Jon Ham is confident that his company can remain a leader in the space when YouTube eventually starts its own live stream platform (YouTube has dabbled in the space but it is rumored that Google will be launching a live streaming feature).