86% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in July, according to new findings from comScore, who also reports that the duration of the average online video was 5.3 minutes. The average online video ad was half a minute.

In fact, video ads accounted for 12.4% of all videos viewed and 1.2% of all minutes spent viewing video online in July, the firm says.

If you watch Hulu much, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that it led the charge in the ad department. comScore reports that Americans viewed over 5.3 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 963 million. Adap.tv came in second (1st among video ad exchanges/networks) with 674 million ad views.

Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 2.4 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 409 million minutes, comScore reports. Video ads reached 49% of the total U.S. population an average of 35.9 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads with an average of 40.4 over the course of the month.

Rumor going around the tech blogosphere today is that Google is in the running for a possible acquisition of Hulu, and according to the Wall Street Journal, should be considered a frontrunner (along with Amazon). The publication notes that Google has been trying to get more premium content for YouTube. Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt is expected to tell broadcasters that it needs them.

Interesting. Google has certainly not been shy about acquisitions lately. We’ll see.

TorrentFreak is reporting that a recent decision by FOX to delay the online availability of its shows (on Hulu, as well as Fox.com) by 8 days has led to an increase in piracy.

Google sites still dominate unique viewers in terms of video content properties. comScore has them with 158,073 in July, compared to Hulu’s 24,368.