YouTube’s top 3 partners generate 1 billion streams per month in the US, Vevo leads the way

Data-measurement and research company Nielsen has revealed its latest figures in support of YouTube’s power in the online video-streaming space.

This time, however, Nielsen’s data focuses on YouTube’s partners, with May 2012 being the first month the research firm has publicly reported on such a metric.

Just to recap, YouTube provides content creators with tools to improve skills, build audiences, and monetize content (through advertising), with companies such as Vevo using YouTube to host its legally licensed music videos. A couple of months back, we reported that the partnership program was being opened to everyone, prior to which it was only open to producers of the most popular video content.

Whilst the Google-owned video-streaming service has thousands of partners, the top ones according to Nielsen are: Vevo, Warner Music Group (WMG) and Machinima, which accounted for almost 1.5 billion streams overall.

“To put this into context, YouTube continues to be the top online video destination in the US with over 136 million unique viewers who streamed 16 billion videos during May 2012,” writes Nielsen.

It’s clear that Vevo is a major YouTube partner, leading the top five partners in terms of total streams (695 million), while Machinima averaged the most streams per viewer, 24 in May 2012.

To add some meat to the bones, Nielsen also revealed that more than half of each channel’s unique viewers were under the age of 35, whilst a sixth of Americans who watched online video during May streamed video on the WMG YouTube channel (23m unique viewers).

For the uninitiated, Vevo is a joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Abu Dhabi Media, with EMI licensing its music video content to the group without taking a stake. Launched in December 2009, Vevo videos are syndicated across the Web (including YouTube), with Google and Vevo sharing advertising revenue between them. Earlier this year it rolled out a new platform for its music streaming service.

Image Credit: Trekkyandy | Flickr