Week in research: Online views of Russian meteorite set record; ads in longer videos viewed more often

Online video views of Russian meteorite set record: The meteorite that broke windows and injured over 1,500 people as it disintegrated over Russia became the fastest video event ever to hit a True Reach of more than 100 million views, reported Visible Measures in a blog post. True Reach is a method that combines video clips related to the event being measured. "Velocity is a big factor with massive online events. The more urgency people feel to be part of the conversation and to be a part of the moment, the more views a video event will generate," Visible Measures noted. Blog post

Image source: Visible Measures

comScore January rankings show video ad views reach 9.1 billion: Nearly 180 million U.S. Internet consumers watched 36.2 billion online content videos in January, with Google Sites ranking as the top provider with 150 million unique viewers, said a press release announcing comScore's January 2013 online video rankings. Americans also watched 9.1 billion online ads, with Google Sites again grabbing the top spot with 1.8 billion ads. Release

Ads in longer videos viewed more often: Video monetization company FreeWheel found online video viewers were more likely to watch--and finish watching--ads in videos at least 20 minutes long, which loaded an average of 9.4 video ads. Short-form videos less than 20 minutes long, on the other hand, saw an average of only .66 ads per video. In addition, "ad completion rates were highest for long videos in Q4 2012 at 93 percent, compared with 81 percent for mid-form videos and 68 percent for short-form videos," said the report. Study