Yahoo! Video Streams Surge 56% in September to Claim Second Spot to YouTube which has broken 5 Billion Monthly Videos Serve, Nielsen Online

Video streams on Yahoo! dramatically increased in September to 265 million, up 56 percent from August's 169 million.  The new traffic puts Yahoo! ahead of *Fox Interactive, which had been number two to YouTube.  Monthly video streams on YouTube have broken the astounding five billion mark with 5.3 billion streams, up 12 percent, according to unpublished results provided by Nielsen Online to Beet.TV.

Earlier this week at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable in New York, Kelsey interviewed Jimmy Pitaro, head of entertainment and sports at Yahoo! about the company's approach to video. He told her that Yahoo has blurred the lines between user-generated and professional content with videos like the Shakira "Hips Don't Like" fan mash-up, which was the number one video on Yahoo for a number of months. He also describes Yahoo's live streaming, on-demand and original content offerings. 

While the Yahoo! numbers pale in comparison to Google's YouTube, much of Yahoo!'s video has advertising.  Google is only selling ads against four percent of YouTube videos, according to a report this summer in The Wall Street Journal.

Here is the table of results provided to Beet.TV from Nielsen Online.

Here is the most recent public release on video site traffic by comScore - it shows that "all Google" sites exceeded 5 billion streams in July, with 98 percent attributed to YouTube. 

Update: 3:00 EDT: CNET's Dan Farber has a statement from Yahoo on factors responsible for the growth in video streams. Dan writes:

Update: A Yahoo spokesperson attributed the growth to contextual placement of the videos and traffic due to major news events. Yahoo had record traffic for Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News in September 2008.

-- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

*Fox Interactive includes MySpaceTV, Photobucket, Fox Television Studios, FOX Broadcasting, IGN Entertainment Gaming Network, and Rotten Tomatoes