According to the latest Nielsen Wire survey, the increasing uptake of longer form compelling video services such as Netflix and Hulu has provided a boost to online video viewing times.

In detail, the analyst found that the amount of time spent watching video from home and work computers over the last three years has more than doubled while the number of unique viewers increased 26% over the same period.

Sampling in August 2011, Nielsen found that two-fifths of streaming time was accounted for by viewers aged 18-34, with males 18-34 contributing 23%.  Video viewers aged 35-49 made up just over a quarter of total steaming time during the month, followed by viewers over the age of 50, interestingly the largest segment of the online video population,  who spent over 9 billion minutes watching.

 “The greater increase in time spent viewing compared to the number of unique viewers is likely due to an increase in the amount of video content available for viewers to watch, especially long-form content like movies and TV shows on sites like Netflix and Hulu,” said Jo Holz, SVP, Client Research Initiatives, Nielsen.