WebProNews

Hulu is Seeing Record Numbers

comScore Video Metrix has released its monthly look at the performance of online video content properties. As usual, Google sites dominate the picture, largely because of YouTube, which gets 99% of Google's video views. The real story, however, is that Hulu is achieving record numbers. The site ranked number 2 (though significantly behind Google with 3.1% market share compared to Google's 37.7) during the month of October, with an all time high of 856 million videos viewed.

Iraq Comes to YouTube

Google has announced that the Iraqi government has launched a dedicated YouTube channel. It can be found at youtube.com/iraqigov. The Iraqi government joins the Pope, the Royal Family, Queen Rania, and the presidents of the United States, France, South Korea, and Estonia in having YouTube channels to communicate with the public. Here's a YouTube message from Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki:

YouTube Launching Automatic Video Captions

YouTube is readying the launch of an automatic captions feature for the site's videos. This and a new automatic caption timing feature will make it easier for anyone to add captions to their videos, and will enable anyone to read captions on more videos.

Vevo Gets Official Launch Date

Vevo, the highly anticipated music video site from YouTube, Universal, and Sony, now has an official release date. Vevo was previously announced to be launching in December, but now the date of December 8th has been set. Vevo is striving to be the Hulu for music videos. Watch this guy talking about the launch party (not the woman pictured):

Facebook Catapults Into Third Place Among Video Sites

When tracking statistics from month to month, we're often forced to examine very tiny changes, and determining whether they're significant can be tough.  Facebook just made things easy, jumping from tenth place to third on a list of top video sites in definitely-momentous move.

Yahoo Messenger Goes Video with New Version

Update: Yahoo Messenger 10 is now out of beta. Features include: high quality video calling, Yahoo Updates view of your contacts list, and availability in 16 languages. Original Article: Yahoo Messenger Version 10 is now available in beta. New features include enhanced video calling, courtesy of GIPS, friend updates from Yahoo, Flickr, Twitter, and others through the new updates view, and improved language support.

Hulu Gets Feet Wet in the Music Video Pool

Hulu and record label EMI have struck a deal, which will give the video content site some music videos, one area in which the site has lacked. Hulu fans shouldn't get too excited about the site becoming a big music video destination just yet though. The deal, according to the New York Times, is to give artists Norah Jones her own channel (which is already live), and over time, add more EMI artists. The Norah Jones channel has all of her music videos, concert footage, and interviews.

Google to Get More Interactive with Mobile Video Ads

AdMob, which is being purchased by Google, has unveiled a new interactive video ad unit for the iPhone today. Upon the announcement of Google's acquisition, the highlights of the purchase included SMS, search, web display, and app display ads. Now, video is part of the mix.

YouTube Connects News Outlets With Citizen Reporters

YouTube has launched a new video platform called YouTube Direct that allows users to submit relevant videos to participating news organizations for broadcast. All videos submitted to news organizations and approved by their editors will appear on YouTube with a link back to the news site. Key features of YouTube Direct include:    

Has YouTube Found the Right Ad Solution?

YouTube has begun testing a new kind of ad format on some of its videos - skippable pre-rolls. These ads let users choose whether or not they want to watch the ad as it appears at the beginning of a video. YouTube says that when it first began testing in-stream ads a couple years ago, abandonment rates on videos were as high as 70%. They found that users were much more likely to view and engage with overlay ads.