DOW JONES NEWSWIRES 
 

U.S. Internet users viewed a record 14.3 billion online videos in December, up 13% from November, with Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube making up half of the month's growth, according to comScore Inc.

Google sites remained the top U.S. online-video property with 5.9 billion videos viewed during December, with YouTube accounting for more than 99% of all videos viewed on Google.

As viewership surges on YouTube, Google has made selling advertising on its video-sharing site a top priority but has run into licensing snags as Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and other music-industry companies renegotiate licensing deals. The companies are paid a share of revenue generated by ads displayed alongside their content, but the recent dispute reflects frustration over how little ad revenue is generated from the deals.

News Corp.'s (NWS) Fox Interactive Media ranked a distant second with 445 million videos viewed in December, followed by Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Viacom Inc. (VIA VIAB). YouTube's 41% market share in the U.S. was 14 times that of Fox Interactive. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newswire.

Hulu, a joint venture of General Electric Co.'s (GE) NBC Universal and News Corp. launched last year, continued to gain viewers and the average video watched was 10 minutes in duration, longer than any other online-video property in comScore's top 10.

Nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 96 videos per viewer for the month, with Google topping 100 million online viewers during the month. About 79% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online videos.

-By John Kell, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5285; john.kell@dowjones.com