• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 16, 2012

Thanks to YouTube, Google still dominates online video. Video advertising is a different story. Hulu and its premium content now attract the bulk of video ad impressions -- more than 1.5 billion in February alone, according to new data from comScore.

By contrast, Google sites (including YouTube) generated about 1.1 billion video ads during the month.

Trailing Hulu and Google, Adap.tv generated 706 million video ad impressions in February, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 683 million, and Specific Media with 611 million impressions.

Among all video properties, consumers also spent the most time watching ads on Hulu -- 650 million minutes in February. Overall, time spent watching video ads totaled nearly 3.2 billion minutes. What’s more, video ads accounted for 16.6% of all videos viewed, and 1.3% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

In total, video ads reached 50% of the total U.S. population an average of 49 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 48, while ESPN delivered an average of 26 ads per viewer.

Ads aside, Google still leads the way with 147.4 million unique viewers in February, followed by Yahoo Sites with 60.9 million; VEVO with 52 million; Facebook.com with 43.6 million; and Viacom Digital with 43.2 million.

Nearly 38 billion video views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 16.7 billion, followed by Hulu with 951 million and Yahoo Sites with 721 million.

The average viewer watched 21.8 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7 hours) and Hulu (3.8 hours) demonstrating the highest average engagement among the top ten properties. 

For February, YouTube partner data revealed that video music channels VEVO maintained the top two positions, with 50.8 million and 29.9 million viewers, respectively. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 22.9 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 14.4 million, FullScreen with 12 million, and Warner Bros (The Ellen Show) with 9 million.

Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement -- 64 minutes per viewer -- closely followed by VEVO -- 61 minutes per viewer -- while VEVO streamed the most videos -- 674 million -- followed by Machinima -- 344 million.

Across the board, 83.8% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in February.