DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Google Inc. (GOOG) again captured the largest share of U.S. web viewers last month, driven primarily by videos viewed at its YouTube.com unit, according to industry researcher comScore Inc. (SCOR). The total U.S. web audience viewed about 37 billion videos online in March. About 181 million U.S. Internet users watched videos online for an average of about 21.7 hours a viewer, comScore reported. Google sites brought in 146.1 million viewers, watching 15.7 billion videos, compared with 147.4 million viewers and 16.7 billion videos in February. Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) sites had about 60.6 million viewers watching 814.8 million videos, while VEVO LLC followed with 51.3 million viewers and 706.3 million videos. Facebook Inc. had 45.1 million viewers watching 247 million videos. Viacom Inc. (VIA, VIAB), AOL Inc. (AOL), Turner Digital and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) followed in total viewers. Viewers spent the most time on Google sites, by far, with 424.6 minutes spent there per viewer, compared with 72.4 minutes watching videos on Yahoo sites and 63 minutes watching VEVO videos. Hulu, owned by Walt Disney Co. (DIS), News Corp. (NWS, NWSA), Comcast Corp.'s (CMCSA, CMCSK) NBC Universal and Providence Equity Partners--came closest to Google, with 275.2 minutes a viewer, though it had 31.1 million viewers watching about 1 billion videos. Hulu had the most video ad views, with a record 1.75 billion, beating out Google's 1.27 billion and BrightRoll Video Network's 953.2 million. News Corp. owns this newswire and The Wall Street Journal. -By Nathalie Tadena, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-3287; nathalie.tadena@dowjones.com
