Facebook No. 3 video site in U.S.

comScore

Facebook is the third-most popular site for watching videos in the U.S., behind premium music video site VEVO at No. 2, and YouTube at No. 1.

The social network already leads as the No. 1 photo site in the United States, but the appetite for video continues to grow: 86 percent of the U.S. Internet audience watched online video in July, according to comScore, which shared the data from its Video Metrix report. The research firm said that 180 million U.S. Internet users watched online videos in July, for "an average of 18.5 hours per viewer."

All told, the "total U.S. Internet audience engaged in a record 6.9 billion viewing sessions." That's a lot of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart clips on YouTube, but also a lot of home video of baby's first steps, wild wedding crashers and the dog really eating the homework on Facebook.

Facebook videos had 51.4 million viewers, comScore said, followed by Microsoft sites (which includes msnbc.com) with 49.5 million and Viacom Digital with 47.3 million.

In June, comScore ranked Facebook as #6 for online video, but the site has been at No. 3 before, last summer. Perhaps there's a summertime swing to Facebook's video audience, with some users having more time to spend on the site (students). Still, there's no question that online video is exploding in general.

"Total viewing sessions reached another all-time high in July at nearly 6.9 billion," with Google sites —which includes YouTube — "crossing the 3 billion mark to account for more than 40 percent of all viewing sessions online," comScore said.

Of those 18.5 hours of online video watched during the month by the "average viewer," Google sites accounted for 5.9 of those hours, followed by Hulu at 3.4 hours.

As for our attention span, it's better than might be expected: the length of the average online video was 5.3 minutes, comScore said, while the "average online video ad" was about 30 seconds. And while that's not long, it's long enough to irritate when you're in a hurry to see a video.

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