The latest Online Video Rankings from comScore reveal that online consumers participated in 5.4 billion viewing sessions during October, up from 5.2 billion the previous month.

Video marketers will be glad to learn that internet viewing sessions are on the rise, and this might encourage all brands to produce video content for their sites. The latest Online Video Rankings from comScore reveal that online consumers participated in 5.4 billion viewing sessions during October, up from 5.2 billion the previous month.

Last month, 175 million Americans watched online video content, averaging 15.1 hours per viewer. This demonstrates an increase over the September video rankings, when viewers averaged just 14.4 hours each.

The majority of content views went to Google sites, with each of its 146 million viewers averaging 271 minutes. Google views were presumably driven by YouTube, which Brafton has reported is consistently gaining viewers. Marketers who create original video content for their brands should remember that YouTube's newly launched Topics Search raises the stakes for video search engine optimization.

Longer viewing sessions in October correlated with more ad exposure. Video ads reached nearly half of the U.S. population (45 percent) last month, averaging 34 views per consumer. Hulu delivered more than 1 billion ads, making it the top platform according to the number of marketing messages served by comScore's measure

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar recently announced that advertisements are the most profitable components of the site, and marketers should be on the lookout for customized ad offerings from the company.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.