The leader in measuring the digital world, comScore, Inc. on Thursday released its study based on data from the comScore Video Metrix service, which show that 27.1 million French Internet users viewed a video online in January, 16 percent up from last year.

The comScore study revealed that Google sites were the most popular online video destination in France, in January. YouTube accounted for 31 percent of the 2.5 billion videos viewed online in January. YouTube accounted for 97 percent of all videos viewed on the property. Google Sites grew 25 percent versus year ago. Google Sites were the leading online video property in France, attracting 15.2 million viewers in January.

According to comScore, the French video site Dailymotion. com was ranked second with 11.5 million viewers, up 14 percent versus year ago, followed by Microsoft Sites (5 million viewers), Groupe TF1 (4.8 million viewers) and Orange Sites (4.4 million viewers).

The study found that each of the top ten online video properties achieved positive growth during the past year, with four out of ten more than doubling their video-viewing audience.

The comScore study also found that the French online video viewers watched three videos per day in January. The study revealed that total 27.1 million online video viewers in France watched a total of 2.5 billion videos in January, an average of 92.9 videos per viewer, or approximately three videos per day. Google Sites led the pack with 31 percent of all videos viewed, followed by Dailymotion. com (9.8 percent) Megavideo. com (2.8 percent), and AOL LLC
(2.7 percent).

The study also found that in January - 78.4 percent of the total French Internet audience viewed online video in January - The total French online video viewing audience watched a combined 180 million hours of video content -
14.9 million viewers watched 756 million videos on YouTube. com (51 videos per viewer) - The average online video duration was 4.3 minutes - Based on a three-month average ending January 2009, 3.9 million mobile phone subscribers, of which 39 percent were younger than 25 years of age, used their phone to watch any kind of TV or video in France.