PARIS: Almost half of French consumers are watching online video each month, with YouTube and Dailymotion proving to be the most popular platforms.

According to a report from Médiamétrie, a research firm, the Google-owned platform is the most-watched online video site in France, with local rival Dailymotion in second place.

The report also suggested that 28 million French people, or just under half the population, watched some form of online video content during September 2011.

Of this total, a majority (23.2m) used YouTube, with Dailymotion well behind with 11m users and TF1, a broadcaster, in third on 8.3m.

According to Médiamétrie, YouTube also topped the rankings for the total time viewers spent watching its videos, on 37m hours across the month.

TF1, which specialises in long-form video content, beat Dailymotion into second place on this metric, notching up 17m hours.

Across all platforms, the report indicated that the typical viewer watched 64 online videos during the month, with total viewing time per person averaging three hours and 16 minutes.

As these are the first figures of their kind published for the French market by Médiamétrie, no month-on-month comparisons are yet available.

Meanwhile, global figures from comScore, released last week, suggested that 86.8% of French web users watched online videos. This total is slightly lower than those of other mature markets such as the US (88%) and Spain (88.9%).

Nevertheless, French service providers continue to innovate in the online video sector, with Orange announcing last week that
it would team up with Microsoft to offer 30 streamed IPTV channels via the tech firm's Xbox Live platform.

The French network provider also unveiled plans to launch Mag3D, an online 3D video channel, in partnership with Dailymotion. This service is already available on the fixed-line internet, and will be rolled out to mobile platforms in February 2012.

Data sourced from ZDNet.fr/Médiamétrie/Orange; additional content by Warc staff