YouTube's reach even bigger than before

According to Compete.com, Google-owned YouTube beat Microsoft's Live.com and MSN for the first time.

YouTube recorded 85.1 million US visitors in July, up 8.7 per cent from 78.3 million in June.

The growth in traffic came at the expense of Hulu, which lost 16 per cent of its traffic in July, largely due to the seasonal lull in the airing of new television shows.

MSN attracted 83.7 million users in July, a huge drop 26 per cent from June's 114.1 million users.

Google remains the top web desintation, followed by Yahoo! and Facebook.

The on-going growth of YouTube is good news for advertisers as the site continues to add brand friendly features in an effort to monetise the service.

Last month is announced it is trialling technology that will allow content partners to serve their own ads into video clips on the site, in a move that could open the floodgates to big-brand campaigns.

FreeWheel, a video-ad serving platform, will enable content providers to serve ads, meaning the same ad could appear in the same content, whether on YouTube or elsewhere on the web.

YouTube has also recently allowed content providers including Sony Pictures and ESPN to place their own video players on the site, enabling them to insert their own ads and attribute the traffic to their own networks.

This article was first published on revolutionmagazine.com