comScore has released its ‘explicit’ U.S. search data for January of this year and while Google and Microsoft Bring’s search share continues to grow, Yahoo’s share dropped both year over year and month over month. This comes after Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries for the first time in December. While Bing grew slightly from December 2011 to January, Google reached its highest share since December 2010 this past month.

Google search queries increased 6% year over year in January, to 66.2%, compared with 65.9% in December 2011 and 65.6% in January 2011. Bing queries increased 21% year over year in January to 15.2%, compared with 15.1% in December 2011 and 13.1% in January 2011. Yahoo queries are on a downward spiral, decreasing 8% year over year in January to 14.1%, compared with 14.5% in December 2011, 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.1% in January 2011. Yikes.

On a combined basis, Bing and Yahoo’s share of searches was 29.3%, compared with 29.6% in December 2011 and 29.2% in January 2011. Clearly, despite the fact that Bing’s technology is now powering Yahoo’s search, the rollup is still not powerful enough to overtake Google search share.

AOL queries declined 6% year over year January to 1.6%, compared with 1.6% in December 2011 and 1.7% in January 2011. And Ask.com queries declined 8% year over year in January to 3%, compared with 2.9% in December 2011 and 3.4% in January 2011.

It’s important to note that this data does not include search queries from mobile devices, which could boost Google’s share further. And these refer to “explicit” US search market share, which includes searches when someone actually types a query into a search box.

comScore also reports that the general search market continued to grow at double-digit rates in 2011, posting an 11-percent increase in 2011. Apparently, this momentum was driven by a 3 percent gain in unique searchers and a 7 percent gain in the number of searches per searcher.

Google’s search query volume grew 10 percent, driven mostly by gains in searches per searcher (up
7 percent). Bing had the highest growth in search query volume in 2011 at 40 percent, propelled by sizeable gains in both unique searchers (up 6 percent) and searches per searcher (up 31 percent).

comScore just released its monthly mobile numbers, which charts smartphone usage from U.S. consumers for the three month period ending in December 2011. For the period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, which is in line with the previous period’s usage. With respect to smartphone usage, 97.9 million (up from 91.4 million people in the previous period) people in the U.S. used smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers.

Google Android continued to be the most popular smartphone platform with 47.3 percent market share, up 2.5 percentage points from September. Apple took the second position, growing 2.2 percentage points to grab 29.6 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 16 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.7 percent) and Symbian (1.4 percent).

Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (no change from September), followed by LG with 20 percent share and Motorola with 13.3 percent share. Apple has 12.4 percent share of total mobile subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points), while RIM following with 6.7 percent share.

As mobile phone usage increases and smartphone adoption grows, more and more consumers are actually using their mobile for functions other than phone calls. In December, 74.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device; ownloaded applications were used by 47.6 percent of subscribers (up 5.1 percentage points), while browsers were used by 47.5 percent (up 4.6 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 3.8 percentage points to 35.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 31.4 percent of the mobile audience (up 2.6 percentage points), while 23.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 2.9 percentage points).

Google just revealed in its fourth quarter earnings, Android has been activated on over 250 million devices, up 50 million since November of last year. But iOS is growing as well. Nielsen reported recently new smartphone buyers are more interested in the iPhone (particularly the 4S) vs. Android phones.

Audience measurement firm comScore has just released its U.S. online video rankings for December 2011. There are few surprises: Google’s YouTube is still king of the hill, while VEVO remains firmly in second place with roughly a third of Google Sites’ audience.

In total, comScore says 182 million U.S. users watched online video content in December 2011 for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 43.5 billion videos.

What caught my eye, however, was that Facebook dropped from third place in November 2011 to fifth place, trailing Yahoo and Viacom properties again, in a single month.

According to comScore’s data, almost 50.8 million unique viewers watched online videos on Facebook.com in November 2011. The month after that, only a little over 42 million people did.

The number of videos watched by these people also dropped significantly: from roughly 270 million in November 2011 to close to 240 million in December 2011.

Looking at the data from October 2011, the drop becomes even more noteworthy: that month Facebook had bumped VEVO off #2 with almost 60 million viewers watching 346 million videos.

That’s a loss of 18 million unique viewers in two months for online video content posted on Facebook.com. I’m struggling to find an explanation for this, and comScore did not offer one either.

Care to venture a guess?

comScore has released its search data for December 2011, and Google continues to dominate in terms of share, with 65.9%, compared with 65.4% in November 2011 and 66.6% in December 2010. Year-over-year, queries increased 9.7% in December.

Yahoo queries came in with 14.5% share, compared with 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.0% in December 2010. Microsoft’s Bing’s share of searches in December was 15.1%, compared with 15% in November 2011 and 12.0% in December 2010. Since Bing powers Yahoo search, combined the two search engine’s share of searches was 29.6%, compared with 30.1% in November 2011. AOL queries declined 8% in December with 1.6% share.

In terms of search queries, this was the first month Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries, says Citi analyst Mark Mahaney. Both search portals are powered by the same technologies but clearly Yahoo search traffic is declining, which is just another problem added to new CEO’s Scott Thompson’s list of problems for the company.

As Mahaney writes in his report citing the new data, “Scott Thompson has his work cut out for him.”

comScore also reports that more than 18.2 billion ‘explicit’ core searches were conducted in December (up 2 percent) (Explicit searches exclude contextually driven searches that do not
reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results). Google Sites ranked first with 12 billion searches (up 3 percent), followed by Microsoft with 2.7 billion (up 2 percent) and Yahoo Sites with 2.6 billion. Ask Network delivered 531 million searches (up 3 percent), while AOL came in with 287 million searches in the month.

Americans conducted 20.5 billion total core search queries in December (up 3 percent). Google had 13.6 billion searches (up 4 percent), followed by Yahoo with 3.3 billion (up 2 percent) and Microsoft with 2.8 billion (up 2 percent).

comScore has just released its latest numbers regarding the mobile landscape here in the U.S., finding that Samsung is still the top OEM with a 25.6 percent marketshare, up just .3 percentage points from the three month period ending in August. Meanwhile, Apple’s price drop on the iPhone 4 along with the introduction of the iPhone 4S has taken its share of the market from 9.8 percent to 11.2 percent.

Mind you, this report doesn’t include holiday sales numbers (Galaxy Nexus, included), and as we know thanks to Flurry data, 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas day. It’s unclear how exactly those activations were split among the two platforms, so there’s no telling if it actually made a difference in market share, but it’s worth considering. These numbers also include feature phones as well as smartphones.

LG (number 2) and Motorola (number 3) both slipped a bit during this time frame, along with last place RIM (which is to be expected, seeing that RIM is doing silly things like getting $1.7 million in PlayBooks stolen at a truck stop).

As far as the mobile OS is concerned, Google still reigns supreme with a 47 percent market share, up from 43.8 percent last period. Apple comes in second, taking its share from 27.3 percent to 28.7 percent, while RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia all slipped this period. Most notably, RIM lost 3.1 percentage points in platform market share, dropping from 19.7 percent in August to 16.6 percent.

Online audience measurement and Web analytics companies Nielsen and comScore have settled their patent disputes, according to a joint statement released this morning.

Nielsen filed suit against its rival in March 2011, accusing comScore of infringing five patents it owns that relate to measuring and displaying online content. Sure enough, comScore countersued Nielsen just a few days later.

Now, the companies have seemingly buried the hatchet and come to this elaborate agreement:

“As part of this settlement both companies will enter into a cross-licensing agreement. Subject to retained rights by Nielsen, comScore will acquire ownership of the four Nielsen families of patents asserted in litigation, a portfolio with many U.S. and international patents.

comScore also grants Nielsen worldwide licenses for the families of the four patents comScore asserted in litigation. Both parties agree not to bring any patent action against the other for the next three years.

In addition, Nielsen has acquired approximately $19 million in comScore restricted common stock with neutral voting requirements, which Nielsen has agreed to hold for a period of one year minimum.”

The last part of the settlement agreement is particularly interesting in my view.

comScore just released its U.S. online holiday spending numbers for the season to-date, and as predicted, consumers continued to spend online in record amounts. For the first 39 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, $24.6 billion has been spent online, which is a 15 percent increase compared to the same days last year.

The most recent week ending Dec. 9 reached $5.9 billion in spending, up 15 percent with 3 days surpassing $1 billion in spending. For the holiday season-to-date, six individual days have surpassed the billion dollar threshold, led by Cyber Monday at $1.25 billion.

To put this in perspective, seven individual shopping days have surpassed $1 billion in spending, and the majority of these took place this year. Cyber Monday 2011 leads with $1.25 billion in sales, and Monday, December 5, 2011 now ranks as the second heaviest spending day in history at $1.18 billion.

So why are so many people flocking online? It’s partly due to more emphasis on coupons and deals as well as an increased amount of free shipping offers by retailers. Another interesting factor to consider is how much mobile helped contribute to this year’s surge in online spending. More and more consumers are using price comparison apps, and making purchases on their mobile phones both from their couches, desks and from inside brick and mortar stores. E-commerce companies are quickly catching on to this trend, and are even offering strong incentives (i.e. Amazon) to use and buy via mobile apps.

And there are still more big spending days on the horizon.

Tomorrow brings Green Monday. The term “Green Monday” was coined by eBay in 2007 to describe the Monday occurring around the second week of December, which has tended to be the heaviest online spending days of the year, as it is one of the last days of the week where consumers can purchase and still receive shipping by the holidays. Over the past six holiday shopping seasons, “Green Monday” has consistently ranked among the top spending days of the season.

Free Shipping day is also this week, which is a marketing event that takes place Friday, December 16, and is also one of the last days when merchants offer free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve. comScore says that in past years Free Shipping Day has helped boost online spending activity later into the season. Last year’s Free Shipping Day, for example, was the third heaviest online spending day of the year at $942 million, a 61 percent increase from 2009.

With more spending on the horizon, clearly e-retailers are in for a very merry holiday season.

comScore, a web and mobile data measurement company, is teaming up with Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands. The strategic partnership basically aims to give brands and agencies better data measurement on social analytics.

Buddy Media is best known for its all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook. With regard to Facebook, the platform lets brand managers agencies create, manage and track Facebook pages in a variety of languages to drive and increase user and brand engagement.

Mutual clients using the Buddy Media social marketing suite and comScore Social measurement service will be able to better quantify the impact of their social media efforts, accessing in-depth data on reach/frequency, demographics, online behavior and benchmarking of competitive brands. As part of the partnership, the companies have agreed to integrate comScore data into the Buddy Media product suite and workflow.

The integration is a premium product, and current Buddy Media clients will continue to receive the company’s in-house analytics in the social marketing suite for free. But clearly, the comScore analytics could provide more in-depth information.

Buddy Media recently raised $54 million in new funding from GGV Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Bay Partners and Insight Venture Partners. The company also just announced a pilot program with google to allow businesses and brands to manage their Google+ Pages using Buddy Media.

Mobile shopping is undoubtedly on the rise, and today comScore is releasing new data reinforcing this continuing trend. According to the data research and analysis firm, 38 percent of smartphone owners have used their phone to make a purchase at least once in the course of their device ownership.

The most popular products purchased on smartphones during the month of September included digital goods, clothing/accessories, tickets and daily deals. In September, two-thirds of all smartphone owners performed some sort of shopping activity on their phones, including comparing products and prices, searching for coupons, taking product pictures or locating a retail store.

In September, digital content purchases, such as music, eBooks, TV episodes and movies, were the most popular mobile purchases with 47 percent the share; 37 percent purchased clothing or accessories directly from retailer, and 35 percent of purchasers bought event tickets. Slightly more than one in three mobile purchasers bought daily deals and gift certificates on their device in September.

In terms of where shoppers were when they purchase items via their phone, 56 percent did so while at home, whereas 42 percent of consumers made purchases while out of home or at work. And 37 percent of the shopper who made remote purchases did so while traveling or commuting. Slightly more than one in three purchasers used their smartphone to make a purchase while in a store.

The fact that over 30 percent of purchasers used their smartphone to buy a product while in a store is interesting, considering that many are probably using their phones as a tool for real-time price and product comparisons. This holiday shopping season is expected to be the year of mobile, so we’ll see if consumers use their phones for retail purchases in record amounts.

Consumers continue to set records with online shopping sales this holiday season. After spending a whopping (and record) $1.25 billion on Cyber Monday, online shoppers continued spending online, with two other days in the past week eclipsing the $1 billion mark in e-commerce sales, bringing the total week’s value to $6 billion. comScore reports that Tuesday, November 29 reached $1.12 billion, while Wednesday, November 30 reached $1.03 billion. These three billion dollar spending days currently rank as three of the four heaviest online spending days in history (with Cyber Monday 2010 being the other). To date, $18.7 billion has been spent online this holiday season, a 15 percent increase from the same period last year.

So what is the reason why more consumers are spending online? comScore says that free shipping is one major factor many shoppers are considering when paying for presents this holiday season. This incentive, says the data research company, is being used at record levels over the first few weeks of the holiday season.

In fact, more than half of all transactions have included free shipping with rates increasing later into the season. The week of Thanksgiving (week ending Nov. 27) saw free shipping occur on 64.4 percent of transactions, while Cyber Week has maintained a similar level at 63.2 percent. In each case, these rates were approximately 10 percentage points higher than last year, showing that more consumers are using these incentives.

comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni says that most consumers actually expect free shipping deals during holiday promotion periods, and retailers are realizing that including this incentive is necessary to lock-in shoppers. More than three-quarters of consumers say that free shipping is important to them when making an online purchase, and nearly half say they will abandon their shopping cart at checkout if they find free shipping is not being offered, he explains.

Interestingly, free shipping also it tends to generate higher average order values, which helps retailers to at least partially offset lower margins. In fact, on Cyber Monday, IBM reported that the average order amount was up 2.6 percent this year from $193.24 to $198.26.

As retailers continue to offer free shipping in the next few weeks, we’re left to wonder if ‘Free Shipping Day’ and the last few weeks of the holiday season will bring even higher sales. For background, Free Shipping Day is a marketing event that generally takes place Friday, December 16, one of the last days when merchants offer free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve.

comScore says that in past years Free Shipping Day has helped boost online spending activity later into the season. Last year’s Free Shipping Day, for example, was the third heaviest online spending day of the year at $942 million, a 61 percent increase from 2009.

With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and now the remaining holiday shopping period continuing to break online sales records, clearly more and more consumers are flocking online to get better deals. And brick and mortar stores may be in trouble if this trend continues in future holiday seasons. With the massive amounts being spent this season, it does make you wonder if there will be a day when all of our holiday shopping will be done online.

comScore just released its monthly U.S. mobile data report, which took a look at trends and activity during the three month average period ending October 2011. While Google Android continued to gain ground in the smartphone market (with 46.3 percent market share); Apple’s OEM share gained during this period (perhaps with the introduction of the iPhone 4S and Sprint as a carrier in the market), with one in ten mobile subscribers now using an iPhone.

According to comScore, 90 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in October, which is up 10 percent from the preceding three month period. And during the time period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices.

In terms of OEMs, Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.5 percent market share, followed by LG with 20.6 percent share and Motorola with 13.6 percent share. Apple took the fourth spit with 10.8 percent share of mobile subscribers (up 1.3 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 6.6 percent share.

With respect to operating system, Google’s Android OS continued to dominate with a nearly 50 percent market share, up 4.4 percentage points from the prior three-month period. Apple OS share only grew 1 percentage point to 28.1 percent of the smartphone market. And RIM ranked third with 17.2 percent share, followed by Microsoft (5.4 percent) and Symbian (1.6 percent).

As mobile phone usage increases and smartphone adoption grows, more and more consumers are actually using their mobile for functions other than phone calls. In October, 71.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.8 percentage points. Browsers were used by 44 percent of subscribers (up 2.9 percentage points). Downloaded applications were used by 43.8 percent (up 3.2 percentage points).

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 2.2 percentage points to 32.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 29.2 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.4 percentage points), while 21.2 percent listened to music on their phones (up 0.9 percentage points).

The U.S. comScore Video Metrix stats are out now for October, revealing that 184 million U.S. Internet users watched online videos last month, with an average of 21.1 hours per viewers. The total U.S. audience viewed 42.6 billion videos, an all-time high, says the measurement firm. Meanwhile, “Google sites,” led by YouTube, retained its number one ranking. However, in October, Facebook staged a comeback by moving up into the number two slot from its previous position of fifth place.

Facebook had been the number three property in August, but dropped down to the fifth slot in September, losing out to VEVO, Microsoft Sites and Viacom Digital. This month, Facebook saw 59.8 million viewers, second only to the ever-dominant “Google Sites” (mainly YouTube) and its record-high of 161 million views and 20.9 billion videos viewed.

VEVO is still going strong, with 57 million viewers, followed by Microsoft Sites with 49.1 million and Viacom Digital with 48.2 million. As noted above, there were more than 42 billion videos viewed this past month, which meant a lot of ads were viewed too. 7.5 billion video ads were shown in October, the most of which were on Hulu where over 1.3 billion impressions were served. Hulu also had the high frequency of ads, with an average of 46.5 ads per viewer.

Time spent viewing ads totaled over 3.2 billion minutes during the month, with Tremor Video delivering the highest duration of ads at 614 million minutes. Tremor Video ranked second overall in ad impressions, too, and highest among video ad exchanges/networks, as it crossed the 1 billion mark for the first time. BrightRoll Video Network ranked third with 756 million, followed by Specific Media with 512 million and CBS Interactive with 415 million.

53% of the U.S. population watched video ads in October, at an average of 47 times per month. (Makes you want that part of your life back, doesn’t it?)

ComScore also ranked the top YouTube partner channels this month, with the top being VEVO (54.2 million viewers), Warner Music (30.4 million viewers), gaming channel Machinima, Schmooru, Maker Studios, Demand Media, FullScreen, Warner Bros, IGN and Big Frame.

It looks like will be a joyful holiday season for many online retailers this year. comScore is reporting that holiday retail e-commerce spending for the first 20 days of the November to December 2011 season is already up 14 percent from the same period last year. Wednesday, November 16 was the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $688 million.

comScore is forecasting that total online retail spending for the holiday season will reach $37.6 billion, 15 percent increase from last year’s season. For background, the 2010 holiday shopping period saw a 12 percent increase from 2009.

In a recent survey conducted with consumers, holiday shoppers say that retailers’ promotional activity for the early part of the season has increased in relation to last year. Specifically, 33 percent of respondents indicated that they are seeing more discounts, sales and promotions vs. last year compared to just 7 percent who said there were fewer.

Unsurprisingly, one of the major incentives for online purchases is free shipping. When asked how important free shipping is for making an online purchase this holiday season, 76 percent of consumers said that it was important and 47 percent indicated they would abandon a purchase if they got to checkout and found that free shipping was not included. And 40 percent of retail e-commerce purchases in Q3 2011 included free shipping. This is expected to spike in Q4 of 2011.

comScore’s chairman Gian Fulgoni attributes the increase to more consumers looking online for better deals, and the shipping convenience considering the current economic conditions. He adds that there is a shift happening from offline retail to online retail channels for price comparisons and browsing. This could also contribute to more conversions on online retail sites.

And we know mobile shopping will be on the rise as well—we’ll start seeing mobile transaction numbers coming in from retailers and companies like eBay, PayPal following Thanksgiving.

We’ll get a clearer picture of just how strong this holiday shopping season will be, both for brick and mortar and online retailers, following Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Stay tuned.

E-commerce spending continues to rise as more consumers look to online retail channels to purchase goods. comScore just released its online retail numbers for the third quarter of 2011, and online retail spending in the U.S. reached $36.3 billion for the quarter, up 13 percent versus year ago.

This is the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth and fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth rates in e-commerce. In Q2 of this year, spending was up 14 percent from last year.

The top-performing online product categories were Digital Content & Subscriptions, Event Tickets, Jewelry & Watches, Consumer Electronics and Computer Software. Spending in each category grew at least 15 percent compared to a year ago.

comScore says the growth in overal spending in the quarter was due to an increase in the number of buyers, which is up 22 percent. According to the report, 74 percent of all Internet users mad at least one online purchase in the quarter. That’s up from 70 percent in Q2 of this year.

And 40 percent of e-commerce transactions included free shipping. Of course, this is down from a peak of 49 percent in Q4 2010 but free shipping offers tend to peak during the holiday season.

Despite the unrest in the financial markets, comScore still believes in the ‘continued health’ of the holiday shopping season. Especially as more consumers rely on online shopping deals, free shipping, comparison pricing products and more, online shopping may continue to be strong in Q4 of 2011.

Of course, we’ll start seeing signs of whether holiday spending has seen an uptick soon. Now that we’re weeks away from Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it will be interesting to see if the current state of the economy has any effect on spending this year.

ComScore just released its U.S. mobile subscriber numbers for the three-month average period ending September 2011. According to the report, 87.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in September, up 12 percent from the preceding three-month period.

Google’s Android OS was top smartphone platform with 44.8 percent market share, up 4.6 percentage points from the prior three-month period. Apple continued in the second position, growing 0.8 percentage points to account for 27.4 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 18.9 percent share, down 4.6 percentage points from the preceding period, followed by Microsoft (5.6 percent) and Symbian (1.8 percent).

During the time period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Samsung ranked as the top manufacturer with 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (steady from the previous time period), followed by LG with 20.6 percent share and Motorola with 13.8 percent share. Apple came in at number 4 with 10.2 percent share of mobile subscribers (up 1.3 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 7.1 percent share.

comScore says that more than 40 percent of mobile subscribers us browsers and applications in their daily use. Browsers were used by 42.9 percent of subscribers (up 2.8 percentage points), while downloaded applications were used by 42.5 percent (up 3 percentage points).

In September, 71.1 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.5 percentage points. Accessing social networking sites or blogs via mobile phones increased 2.4 percentage points to 31.5 percent of mobile subscribers. And mobile game-playing was up by 1.9 percentage points to take 28.8 percent of the mobile audience, while 20.9 percent listened to music on their phones (up 1.9 percentage points).

Since this study only went up to September, it should be interesting to see how the newly released iPhone 4S, and the addition of the Sprint network, helps boost Apple’s U.S. mobile subscribers.

comScore’s online video stats for September are in, and in today’s non-news, Google Sites again ranks as the number one source of online video views. Google Sites, which derives most of its traffic from YouTube, served 18.6 billion videos in September, which made up 47 percent of the 39.8 billion videos viewed on the Web last month. Even for the cynical newsmen among us, that is pretty impressive.

What’s more, Microsoft Sites and Viacom Digital both leap-frogged Facebook in the rankings, to take third and fourth place respectively, while Facebook dropped to fifth. (You can read our August coverage of the web video trends here and Erick’s coverage of Facebook assuming third place back in July here.)

On the advertising side of online video, comScore reports that, of the 6.8 billion video ads viewed by Americans in September, more than 1 billion of those ad impressions were served by Hulu.

According to comScore, “video ads” are defined solely by streaming-video advertising and “do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc.”

In September, Hulu served 1.02 billion video ads, with duration of these ads totaling 414 million minutes. The site resumed its 1 billion+ rate after dipping below the billion-benchmark over the summer, likely picking back up because our nation’s younguns are headed back to school. After all, let’s be honest, college kids returning to their dorm rooms no longer have the benefit of mom and dad’s cable package, so it’s back to watching their favorite TV shows on Hulu.

And, as video ads reached 50 percent of the U.S. population an average of 45.3 times during September, Hulu was the property that delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 38.2 per viewer. Anyone who watches Hulu knows that you can’t get through a broadcast without sitting through about 17 ads.

Hulu seems to be receiving a disproportionate share of video ad dollars because the platform is viewed as brand-safe, as advertisers know that they can run their ads on Hulu’s content without having to be red-faced when that ad shows up on some random user-generated video posted by someone’s uncle.

And, as we wrote last month, Hulu has never done social particularly well, but on September 22nd, Hulu went live on Facebook, meaning that video site’s users now get to watch their content directly within Facebook without having to leave the social network. This also means that the ads played by advertisers on Hulu get the added benefit of Facebook users’ eyeballs. Ads galore.

ComScore’s August web video rankings are in, and this is for sure: Americans watch an enormous amount of online video content, with most of that taking place on — you guessed it — YouTube. Of course, last month, Facebook, already the largest photo site on the Web, became the third largest video site on the Internet in terms of unique viewers. Which I find interesting since I can count the total number of times I’ve watched video on Facebook on two hands.

Yet, comScore’s rankings find Facebook retaining third position in August, with 51.6 million unique viewers, trailing VEVO in second (with 62 million) and Google Sites (i.e. YouTube) at 162 million. Viacom Digital lept into fourth place, while Microsoft dropped into fifth, as Yahoo and Aol remained in sixth and seventh, with their unique views on the rise.

In terms of the big picture stats, total viewing sessions tallied yet another all-time high in August with 6.9 billion sessions (with YouTube qua Google Sites) generating just over half of those. The average web video viewer watched 18 hours of content over the course of August, with YouTube and Hulu unsurprisingly attracting the highest engagement at 5.7 hours and 3.2 hours, respectively. What’s more, 85.8 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

However, the interesting part of this report, at least for me, comes in the form of a snapshot of the current proliferation of video advertising in the U.S. Americans had more than 5.6 billion video ads put in front of their peepers in August. That’s nearly one ad per person for 80 percent of the entire population of the planet. What’s more video advertising reached 50 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 37.6 times during August, with the total time spend watching video ads totaling more than 2.5 billion minutes last month, according to comScore. If my calculations are correct, that is the equivalent of serving nearly 2,000 years worth of videos.

Also of note for online video ads: According to comScore, video ads accounted for 13.4 percent of all videos viewed and 1.3 percent of all minutes spent viewing videos online. While this is likely to make the heart weep for those who hate viewing ads in video content, for advertisers digital video has become a truly remarkable (and nearly guaranteed) method by which to reach a wide audience. Especially considering sites like Hulu won’t let you skip over videos.

And speaking of Hulu’s love affair with video ads, the video site generated the highest number of video ad impressions, serving 996 million in August, with Tremor Video in second at 764 million, and Adap.tv in third at 720 million.

ComScore has also struck a deal with YouTube for a full comparison of viewership across thousands of YouTube partners and their channels. You can check out those numbers and more here.

Excerpt image courtesy of Blankenship Design.

Europe is growing quite fond of Google’s Android operating system, according to market research firm ComScore. Android devices now account for nearly a quarter of all the smartphones used in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK — a dramatic jump over the Google OS’s performance last year.

In July 2010, Android only accounted for 6% of the smartphones used in those five European markets, putting it dead last behind Symbian, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM. One year later, Android has zoomed past their rivals in Cupertino, and now is second only to Symbian in terms of market share.

Now, a full 22.3% of EU5 smartphones run on Android, a 16 point bump over last year. The most popular Android handsets are made by HTC, accounting for 34.6% of all devices, with Samsung hot on their heels at 31.7%.

Symbian’s hold on the lead is, at present, tenuous at best: while it powered more than half of the smartphones in the EU5 last year, usage has slipped to 37.8%, a drastic shift by any stretch. Given Android’s explosion in popularity, this could be Symbian’s last appearance in the top spot.

Meanwhile, Apple slips to third place with 20.3% of the market. They’ve benefitted from a very slight increase in market share over the last year, but that could all change soon. When Apple’s long-awaited iPhone 5 (or 4S, or whatever it ends up being called) launches, it’s likely to steal a bit of market share from all parties, perhaps securing them a second place finish next time around.

The entire landscape is in flux, and the chart below may not look anything like it does when ComScore’s next report pops up. Android will probably continue to pick up steam thanks to HTC and Samsung’s wide product lines, and Apple (as mentioned) will see a bump thanks to new hardware. Similarly, RIM’s forthcoming QNX BlackBerrys could help them pick up some steam, as could Microsoft’s WP7 Mango update.

comScore’s July traffic numbers are out and similar to June’s findings, Facebook and Twitter both saw record traffic in terms of U.S. unique visitors in the month. In July, Facebook saw a whopping 162 million unique visitors, compared to 160.8 million unique vistors in June, and 157.2 million uniques in May.

Twitter also posted record traffic in its five year history; with 32.8 million unique U.S. visitors in July, up from 30.6 million unique visitors in June, and 27 million unique vistors in May. As we’ve noted in the past, the steady increase in traffic is a big deal for Twitter, which splits traffic between its own mobile clients and the many third-party clients that are used to access the network. And Twitter just completed the switch from the old web interface to its redesigned, feature-rich web app.

LinkedIn, which saw a traffic spike post-IPO, dipped slightly in terms of unique U.S. visitors in July, seeing 32.5 million unique visitors in the month compared to 33.9 million unique visitors in June. MySpace continued to bleed traffic, with 32.8 million unique visitors in July (tied with Twitter), down from 33 million in June.

While we once thought that Facebook and Twitter would duel it out for users and traffic, clearly that’s not the case anymore. Facebook’s U.S. traffic is five-fold to Twitter visitors. Twitter isn’t ‘killing’ Facebook, or vice versa, as Twitter is still growing in terms of traffic.

But with the new kid on the block, Google+ steadily gaining users, it should be interesting to see if the search giant’s social network will reach Twitter’s traffic. Already there are signs that Google+ traffic is slowing, but it’s still early and that could change.

According to audience measurement and tracking firm comScore, U.S. retail e-commerce spending went up 14 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same period a year ago. Online retail spending reached $37.5 billion for the quarter, primarily due to an increase in the number of buyers (up 16 percent), with 70 percent of all Internet users making at least one online purchase in the quarter.

We should note that spending was lower than the first quarter of the year, when comScore tracked $38 billion in retail e-commerce sales in the United States. Although, as you can see in the chart below, that is always the case, just like the fourth quarter of a year always has the highest spending because of the end-of-year holiday period.

The 14 percent bump compared to last year represented the seventh consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth rates.

According to comScore, the top 25 online retailers accounted for 66.4 percent of dollars spent online, down from 67.7 percent a year ago and down from a peak of 69.9 percent in Q3 2010.

comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni posits that almost $1 in every $10 of discretionary spending in the U.S. now occurs online.