The leader in web researches, comScore, Inc. has today released January 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service that shows that nearly 30 million viewers videos online during past year. The data shows that the total U.K. online video viewing audience showed 10 percent growth during the past year to 29.6 million unique viewers aging 15 and older.

The comScore data indicates that Google remained the U.K.’s most popular online video property. With 23.7 million viewers (up 14 percent versus year ago), Google Sites were once again ranked as the top online video property in the U.K. Google’s supersite YouTube.com helped it earn the top slot. BBC Sites were ranked at number two, with 6.8 million viewers, followed by Microsoft Sites (4.3 million viewers) at number three, Facebook.com (3.6 million viewers) at number four, and Yahoo! Sites (3 million viewers) at number five. According to the comScore data, BBC sites lead traditional TV broadcaster market with 55 million videos viewed.

The comScore data also reveals that total 4 billion videos were viewed online in the U.K. in January 2009, of which 99.5 million (2.5 percent) were watched on the Web sites of the top 5 television broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Sky. The majority of these videos were viewed on BBC Sites, which captured a 54.7 percent market share among the Big 5, followed by Channel 4 (23.8 percent share), ITV Sites (13.6 percent share), Sky Sites (6.8 percent share) and Five.tv (1.1 percent share). 

According to the January 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, 80.1 percent of the total U.K. Internet audience viewed online video. The total U.K. online video viewing audience watched a combined 280 million hours of video content. 23.5 million viewers watched over 2 billion videos on YouTube.com (86 videos per viewer). 1.1 million U.K. mobile phone subscribers visited YouTube.com. 4.8 million U.K. mobile phone subscribers used their phone to watch any kind of TV or video.