WebProNews

It's not April Fools' Day, and some sort of mathematical miscalculation doesn't seem to have occurred.  Instead, surprising as the situation may be, Yahoo's video property appears to have become more popular than the ones owned by Fox, Microsoft, and Nickelodeon.

So says Nielsen (by way of Beet.TV), which believes Yahoo Video attracted 29.9 million unique visitors in September and displayed around 264.3 million clips.  This means a 56 percent month-over-month increase occurred in terms of that second statistic.  Streams at Fox, Microsoft, and Nickelodeon decreased by 13, 20, and 27 percent, respectively, during the same period.  They all fell behind as a result.

 

YouTube, for the record, stayed in the lead - way out in the lead, showing 5.4 billion clips - but at least had a tamer growth rate of 12 percent.

So how and why did Yahoo leap ahead so much?  Well, first, we'll return to the matter of Nielsen's stats being accurate.  Compete suggests a near-identical month-over-month growth rate of 59.1 percent.

Then we're down to guesses and vague comments.  Andy Plesser writes, "Earlier this week . . . Kelsey interviewed Jimmy Pitaro, head of entertainment and sports at Yahoo! about the company's approach to video.  He told her that Yahoo has blurred the lines between user-generated and professional content with videos like the Shakira 'Hips Don't Lie' fan mash-up, which was the number one video on Yahoo for a number of months.  He also describes Yahoo's live streaming, on-demand and original content offerings."

Given all the Halloween vids and election fuss, don't be surprised if Yahoo Video becomes even more popular over the next couple of months.