In an age of paid, owned, and earned media, YouTube sits at the intersection of the three. Brands like Red Bull have distributed content to hundreds of millions of users through their owned channels on the platform, but the site also sells ads to all of the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. What’s more, it’s audience continues to grow. Its millions of videos are now watched by 1 billion users a month, globally, and over 150 million users in the U.S.
That represents a massive and growing opportunity for marketers. Here are 15 statistics every marketer should know about the Google-owned video site:
More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month, globally. (YouTube)
Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube, globally. (YouTube)
70 percent of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S. (YouTube)
152 million unique users visit YouTube every month from the U.S. (YouTube)
25 percent of global YouTube views come from mobile devices. (YouTube)
40 percent of YouTube watchtime in the U.S. is on mobile devices. (YouTube)
Almost two-thirds of YouTube’s U.S. audience is under 34 years of age. Forty-six percent are 24 or younger. (Quantcast)
YouTube’s audience skews female. Fifty-three percent of its viewers are women; 47 percent are men. (Nielsen)
A YouTube homepage ad typically costs around $400,000. On average, the homepage receives 60 million views from 23 million unique users every day. (Digiday/Google)
YouTube’s monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly 10 Super Bowl audiences. (YouTube)
Nike Football’s “My Time is Now” ad was the most-viewed piece of branded content on YouTube in 2012. The three-minute video received a total of almost 21 million views globally. (YouTube)
Over 70 percent of in-stream video ads on YouTube are now skippable. (Digiday/YouTube)
Pre-roll ads longer than 30 seconds perform as well as 15- or 30-second ones, YouTube reports. (Digiday/YouTube)
Red Bull operates the most-watched brand YouTube channel of all-time. It’s videos have received a total of almost 550 million views, and the channel has attracted a total of over 1.5 million subscribers. (OpenSlate)
500 years of YouTube videos are watched every day on other social media sites. (YouTube)
Over 700 YouTube videos are shared every minute on Twitter. (YouTube)
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