Facebook Climbs To No. 3 Video Site In U.S.

Facebook is already the largest photo site in the U.S., and now it is climbing up the charts for online video. Facebook now ranks as the third largest video site on the Web in terms of unique viewers according to comScore, with an estimated 51.5 million people on Facebook watching a video during the month of July. The month before it was No. 6. It passed Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom. Only Vevo (with 62 million monthly viewers) and YouTube (158 million) are bigger.

It is only a matter of time before Facebook passes Vevo, but can it ever take the crown from Google/Youtube? I’m not sure that will happen any time soon. ComScore estimates there were 3 billion viewing sessions on YouTube in July versus 186 million on Facebook. (Note that “viewing sessions” is different than “views” or “plays” and can include multiple videos watched). YouTube still accounts for 43 percent of all viewing sessions in the U.S.

Hulu stayed at No. 9 on the list of most-watched video sites, with unique viewers slipping 8.6 percent to 24.4 million viewers in July. Viewing sessions, however, increased 2.5 percent to 161 million and Hulu served nearly 1 billion video ads, more than any other online video ad network.