Our everyday lives get so cramped that we often feel stressed by the end of the day.  And for most of us, the quickest way to relieve some of the stress is to watch something funny.  And we all know that the quickest and easiest access to humorous videos is YouTube.  Yeah, that’s probably everyone’s favorite time-killer or even guilty pleasure: watching absurdly funny videos online.

The recently released study by comScore regarding online video viewing showed that 184 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in October, for an average of 21.1 hours per viewer.  The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 42.6 billion videos, which represents an all-time high.

The study showed that people prefer to watch online videos on YouTube with 160,959 unique viewers, followed by Facebook with 59,815 unique viewers, and third on the list is Vevo with 56,998 unique viewers.  On an average, viewers spent 7.1 hours online watching videos on Google sites.

Google sites have the largest share of viewers because they have the largest share of video content available on the web.  Online video ads soared at 7.5 million with Hulu having the  largest share of online video ads with 1,360,709 video ads available on their site.

YouTube Channels on the rise, cable on its way out

YouTube knows its reach, but is also fighting to stay ahead of developing trends. In its efforts to maintain widespread appeal, YouTube recently added Channels to their offerings.  Thanks to this latest comScore report, we can see which of those had the most unique viewers.  Vevo @ YouTube has 54,170 unique viewers, spending an average of 66.1 minutes watching some of their 799,443 videos, followed by Warner Music @ Youtube, Machinima @ YouTube, Schmooru @ YouTube, and Maker Studios @ YouTube in 5th place.

But with more people enjoying web videos, cable TV’s future becomes bleaker. Online video has stepped in with new service models, taking full advantage of our insatiable appetite for on-demand content.  Some content providers are looking into gaining back money lost by increasing streaming service fees.  So Netflix’s $7.99 subscription could add an extra $20 for the web streaming.  But this could also depend on data consumption.  People with minimal data usage, using it only for social networks or e-mails should not expect an increase in their monthly subscription fee, while data hoggers will see the ugly side of extra charges.