Machinima, Maker, Vevo Top comScore’s YouTube Rankings

One of online video’s greatest challenges as a burgeoning entertainment industry (that’s trying to steal advertising dollars from established entertainment industries) is measurement.

Sophisticated systems and practices to facilitate strategic ad buying based on trusted(?) analytics have had time to develop over the past 80+ years of television. Industry executives and organizations are still arguing over what constitutes a view after a decade or so of watching videos online.

There’s clearly a lot of ground that needs be covered on online video’s path towards measurement standardization and universal advertiser acceptance. Today, comScore and YouTube just made a big step in the right direction.

The internet marketing research company is now able to provide “a comprehensive and granular view of the unique audience within” certain channels (or a grouping of channels under the umbrella of one network) on the world’s largest video sharing site. YouTube Partner Reporting is comScore’s latest offering under its Video Metrix measurement service. The product displays “individual audiences for partners and their channels” (like Philip DeFranco, Revision3, Machinima, and many more), which will enable “advertisers to more-easily create and optimize campaigns across specific channels to reach desired target audiences.”

So, what are the results? Which YouTube Partner channels topped comScore’s YouTube charts for July 2011?

It should come as no surprise to learn two music video oriented networks claimed the #1 and #2 spots. Vevo @ YouTube is on top of the charts with 59+ million total unique monthly viewers and 844+ videos viewed, while Warner Music @ YouTube is a distant second with 31+ million total unique viewers and 197+ million videos viewed in July. Vevo, in fact, is #1 in all of comScore’s public-facing metrics

except for Minutes per Viewer. In that statistic, Vevo clocks in at 65.8 minutes per viewer, roughly 10% less than Machinima @ YouTube’s 72.7 minutes per viewer.