The New York Times Finds Traction with News Video -- 544,000 Unique Viewers in December, Nielsen

The New York Times has been providing resources and visibility around its online video, and the audience appears to be substantial, with  some 544,000 unique visitors in December, according to numbers provided to Beet.TV by Nielsen Online. 

The number of uniques in November was higher, as expected because of Election Day, with 681,000. 

The video numbers are quite small compared to overall unique visitors to the site, which reached 55 million in November, according to Nielsen -- this number puts The New York Times (entire traffic to the parent's sites) in the top 10 ranking of the most trafficked "parent companies" on the Web. (This would include About.com, Boston.com, etc.)

One factor leading to the growth of video consumption has been the video player powered by Brightcove's  new platform.  The player is customized to present multiple thumbnails of various sections of the paper including general news, business, technology, food, sports and others.

Last week in Washington at the YouTube media event in Google's Washington offices, I interviewed  Ann Derry, who heads editorial operations for for video at the paper.  She told me about the impact of the new player and popularity of the Times' news videos. 

-- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer