YouTube video has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years. Watching videos online has become a mainstream activity and with the popularity of mobile devices and tablets you can watch it anywhere, anytime. By next year (2014) online video could account for 50% of all internet traffic. The number of online video users is expected to double to 1.5 billion in 2016.
Here’s our top 10 YouTube insights.
1. When it began – YouTube started on Valentine’s day, 14 February 2005 and over that time has moved from entertainment to education such as, ‘how to’ videos.
2. Monthly visits – more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube and over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month (October 2013).
3. Uploads – 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
4. 1st billion views – first video to reach one billion views was Gangam Style – PSY.
5. Competitors – the likes of Vimeo, Hulu and Blip.tv are all scrabbling to grab a slice of the YouTube market.
6. Search engine – it is the second largest search engine (bigger than Bing, Yahoo, ASK and Yahoo combined).
7. Mobile – makes up more than 25% of YouTube’s global watch time, more than one billion views a day and overall online video accounts for 50% of all mobile traffic.
8. Advertisers – has more than a million advertisers using Google ad platforms, the majority of which are small businesses.
9. Partner programme – YouTube has more than a million creators from over 30 countries around the world earning money from their videos (2 billion views per week are monetised).
10. Where embedded – YouTube videos are embedded in blogs, websites and online stores; plus eCommerce stores with product video reviews produce better conversion rates.
24% of national brands are using online video to market to consumers. So it’s no surprise that 76% of marketers plan to add video to their sites, making it a higher priority than Facebook and Twitter. So why not share your valuable YouTube insights in the comments section below or on Twitter.