YouTube Video Statistics: Demographics, Users, Revenue & More

Three ex-PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen, founded YouTube in February 2005 at San Bruno, California. In 2005 November, Sequoia Capital invested 3.5 million dollars into YouTube and further invested another 8 million dollars in April 2006. Early on into its birth, within a year and a half, Google acquired YouTube for 1.5 billion dollars in November 2006, which made it the second-largest acquisition by Google and has since operated as a Google subsidiary. It is a video sharing platform wherein users can either subscribe to other users and channels, or upload/ view/ share videos themselves. They can even rate other videos and comment on videos.

Key Stats

Every day, five billion YouTube videos are watched around the world
500 hours of video uploaded every minute
YouTube has over 50 million active content creators
YouTube has over 2 billion active monthly users

Growth in YouTube Users

In 2012, YouTube had 800 million unique users every month.
YouTube crossed the 1 billion monthly active users mark in March 2013.
Since 2018, 70% of YouTube views are by mobile devices.
In June 2018, YouTube TV had 300,000 paid subscribers.
In September 2019, YouTube had around 30 million daily active users.
YouTube has 50 million creators.
In 2019, YouTube generated its revenue from 20 million subscribers of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music and 2 million subscribers from YouTube TV.
As of 2020, YouTube has been used by 2 billion monthly users.

Growth in Usage:

In May 2010, there were more than 2 billion daily YouTube viewers.
On average, a visitor used to visit 6.5 YouTube pages during every visit.
In 2017, the total time spent on YouTube on mobile was around 1 hour.
An average mobile session on YouTube is 40 minutes.
As of June 2018, more than 5 billion videos have been shared on YouTube.
While on Android, YouTube mostly comes in as a pre-downloaded app, so its statistics are not clear, but in 2018, it had 5 billion installations on Android devices.
In 2018, each YouTube visitor had spent 8 minutes and 41 seconds on Android, which had increased to 11 minutes and 24 seconds in 2019.
500 hours of video content get uploaded every minute on YouTube in 2019. It implies that 720,000 hours of video content get uploaded daily on the platform.
In 2019, people watched 250 million hours of YouTube content on TV screens. In 2018, it was only 180 million hours a day.
Moreover, daily 1 billion hours of video content have been watched on YouTube, which is more than the combined viewership hours of Netflix and Facebook.
Collectively, YouTube viewers watch 46,000 years of content annually.
Daily more than 1 billion mobile video views happen on YouTube.
‘How to’ video search grows by 70% every year on YouTube.
Only 10% of the channels on YouTube create 70% of the popular videos.
10% of the popular YouTube broadcasts attract 79% of viewers.
YouTube is available in 80 languages and has a local version in 91 countries.
95% of internet users can access YouTube.
In 2019, YouTube maintained its No. 1 downloaded iOS app consecutively for the 2^nd time in a raw. In 2017, it was in the second rank.
In January 2020, 93% of the most-watched videos were music content.
Technically, YouTube is the second largest search engine and most visited site after Google.

Demographics for YouTube’s Recommendation Viewers:

United States

As per a June 2018 survey, 15% of US adults regularly watch recommended YouTube videos alongside the ones they watch currently. The number was higher by 22% for users in the age group of 18-29 years. It was at 15% for the 30-49-year age group and 11% for the 50-64-year age group.

66% of the adults watched the recommendations occasionally, and the numbers were almost consistent across all age groups. It was 67% for users in the age group of 18-29 years, 68% for the 30-49-year age group, and 63% for the 50-64-year age group.

Top YouTube Channels

The most subscribed channel is T-series, with 128 million subscribers in February 2020. It has published 14,428 videos and has 99 billion viewers altogether. Monthly, it has 3.23 billion views.
PewDiePie has 103 million subscribers, has over 24.5 billion views, and has published 4,072 videos.
Cocomelon-Nursery Rhymes is the third most popular channel on YouTube with 73.1 million followers, 51 billion views, and has uploaded 502 videos. It has 2.36 billion monthly views making it the 2^nd most viewed YouTube channel.
Like Nastya Vlog has 2.01 billion monthly views as of January 2020, which makes it the third most-viewed YouTube channel currently.
SET India has 65 million subscribers and stands at the 4^th It has 31,000 videos in the library, which include Crime Patrol and comedy shows like The Kapil Sharma Show.
5^th on the list is 5-Minute Crafts that has 64.3 million followers and 17 billion views for the 3807 videos it has uploaded to date.
The most viewed channel as of May 2019 was T-series, with 70 billion views.
JuegaGerman, at 35.1 million subscribers, is the top gaming channel on YouTube.
The top 10 channels on YouTube earned 180.5 million dollars as of June 2018, as per the revenue calculation based on a 12-months.
Ryan ToysReview earned 22 million in 2018, which made him the highest-earning YouTuber.

Top YouTube Videos

Nike advertisement starring Ronaldinho was the first video on YouTube to cross 1 million views.
Gangnam style crossed the 1 billion views mark in just 5 months and that songs stand for the credit for passing the billion mark for the first time in the history.
Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee is the most-watched YouTube video with 6.6 billion views. It crossed the 1 billion views mark in 97 days.
The video that crossed 1 billion views within a short period is Adele’s Hello. It could break the mark in 87.4 days.
Masha and the Bear- Recipe for Disaster (Episode 17) is the most-watched non-music YouTube video with 4 billion views.
‘Boy with Luv’ by BTS is the video to have most views in 24 hours with 78 million views. Previously Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next held this position, which was able to cross 55.4 million views in 24 hours, Blackpink- Kill this love broke the record with 56.7 million views, and Taylor Swift broke it with 65.2 million views for Me!
YouTube Rewind 2018 is the most disliked video and has received 16 million dislikes. ‘Baby’ by Justin Beiber has 11 million dislikes.
There are more than 100 videos that are available for viewing on YouTube in the highest pixel quality.

YouTube Video Categories and Video Length:

As of 2018, gaming videos on YouTube are 24.7 minutes long, whereas films and animations are 19.2 minutes long. Gaming and movies both constitute 7% each of the total number of videos viewed on YouTube. Gaming videos form 31% of the available video content on YouTube, whereas films are around 6%.
Entertainment videos are 12.9 minutes in length, and music videos are 6.8 minutes on average. Entertainment videos consist of 25% of the total YouTube video views, whereas music videos constitute 20%. Entertainment videos are only 10% of the video content available on the platform. Music videos are even lesser at just 5%.
People and vlogs have 19% of the total YouTube video views and are around 8.4 minutes long. They constitute 32% of the video content on YouTube.
The average length of a video on YouTube is 11.7 minutes.

Finances and Revenue:

It costs about 6.35 billion dollars to run YouTube annually.
Before 2020, YouTube’s revenues were not available. In 2008 Forbes estimated the revenue at 200 million dollars.
In 2012, the revenue of YouTube was projected to increase to 3.7 billion dollars.
In 2013, this almost doubled to 5.6 billion dollars as per estimates.
As per the official reports published by Google, YouTube generated 8.1 billion dollars in 2017 in revenue and 11.1 billion dollars in revenue in 2018.
In 2019, YouTube made 15.1 billion dollars in revenue, which was a 36% increase from 2018. It was also 10% of the total revenue of the parent company.

US Revenues:

In 2016, YouTube did 2.92 billion US dollars in advertising revenue in the USA, which increased to 3.88 billion in 2017.
In 2018, YouTube steadily increased to about 4.43 billion dollars in net revenue in advertising in the United States.
The latest figure for 2019 ad revenues is 4.96 billion dollars solely in the United States.
Since the acquisition by Google in 2007, YouTube has paid 1.2 billion dollars to rights holders.

Demographics Share:

Globally, 18-34 years consider YouTube their 2^nd most preferred option to watch videos on TV screens.
80% of the users are from outside of the US.
62% of users are male, and 38% are female.
Around the world, 11% of the users of YouTube are 18-24 years, 23% are 25-34 years, 26% are 35-44 years, 16% of the users are 45-54 years, and 8% are between the ages of 55-64 years.

United States:

YouTube is the most popular online platform in the United States.
Out of the 83% of adults who use YouTube, 37% use it daily.
In 2019, 81% of the users within the age group 15-25-year use YouTube. 71% of the viewers are within the age group of 26-35 years, whereas 67% of viewers are within the age group of 36-45 years, and 66% are within 46-55 years age group. Even among those above 56 years, the platform still has a 58% popularity.
90% of Americans within the age group of 18-24 years use YouTube every month.
73% of adults use YouTube as opposed to 69% of adults using Facebook and 37% using Instagram.
9% of small businesses in the US use YouTube.

India:

93% of online video viewers in India watch YouTube videos. As opposed to that, Netflix’s market share in India is just 3%.
Over the past few years, YouTube has seen tremendous growth in viewership in India. In 2017, there were 168.6 million viewers in India, which is 93.94% of the total digital video viewers.
In 2018, 93.5% of the digital video viewers were YouTube viewers, which was 229.2 million viewers. It shows a 36% increase from the previous year.
In 2019, this number increased to 271.9 million viewers, which was again 93.5% of the digital viewer population.
60% of the viewers are from outside the major Indian cities. 65% of the viewers subscribe to channels. 70% of the viewers watch ads with the audio.

United Kingdom:

78% of adult males and 80% of adult females in the UK use YouTube.
Of the 79% adult users, 33% use YouTube daily in the UK.
In the United Kingdom, YouTube is the most popular app among all age groups right from 18-64 years. Above the age of 65, Facebook is the most popular app, followed by YouTube in second place.
In the 18-24 age group, YouTube is followed by Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat, respectively.
For the 25-34 years group, the second and third places remain the same, followed by WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter.
Similarly, for the 35-44 age group, WhatsApp is 4^th, followed by Twitter and Instagram.
In the 45-54 year age group as well as the 55-4 age group, WhatsApp is 4^thposition, followed by Twitter and Skype.

Japan:

34% of the Japanese digital viewers access YouTube, which is higher than Facebook’s 31.2%. The most popular network in Japan is LINE, which has 80.8% viewership. Even Instagram and WhatsApp are more popular than YouTube at 42.8% and 35.8% popularity, respectively.

Russia:

YouTube has a 63% popularity in Russia, which is much higher than local Russian platforms such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Both have only 61% and 42% popularity, respectively. Facebook, on the other hand, has only 35% popularity.

Demographics Presence:

15% of the site traffic for YouTube comes from the United States.
1% of the site traffic comes from India, and 4.6% comes from Japan.
5% of YouTube’s visitors are from Russia, where it is also the most used platform.
7% of YouTube traffic gets generated from China, which is in the 5^th position. However, the popularity of YouTube in China is very low, and as per the statistics, it ranks 12^th in the list of popular networks.

YouTube for Businesses and Marketers:

Last year, the number of channels earning USD10,000 per annum, increased by 50% from the previous year.
On the other hand, the number of channels that earn USD100,000 per annum increased by 40% from the year before.
YouTube influencers with 500-5k followers charge around 315 dollars for a video.
Influencers with more than 5,000 followers charge 3857 dollars for a video.
YouTube is the second-best preferred video platform after Netflix for millennials. 2/3^rd of the millennials watch online videos on YouTube.
The top 100 brands upload one video content on YouTube once every 18.5 minutes.
20% of users do not continue watching a video if they don’t get hooked on to it in the first 10 seconds.
The likelihood of YouTube ads holding the viewer’s attention is 84% higher than that of TV ads.
63% of users in 13-24 years age group and 51% of people over the age of 35 years try products recommended by YouTube influencers.

Projections:

YouTube expects to make 5.5 billion dollars from advertisement revenue in 2020, exclusively from the USA.
With the introduction of the Data-Saving version of YouTube, the Indian viewership may increase by 308.7 million by 2020, which would be roughly 93.4% of the digital viewership.
In 2021, the number further projected to rise to 342.3 million viewers, which would be roughly 92.8% of the digital viewer audience considering the increase in viewership of other streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Conclusion:

YouTube stood like a towering giant without any competitor. However, in recent years, with the popularity of online streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO, the competition is taking its momentum. Still, YouTube retains the majority of the market share in most of the domains. Despite the increased frequency of ads, solutions such as paid prime ad-free membership are not only adding to the revenue for YouTube but also enhancing its competitive edge in the online streaming service market.

YouTube still dominates the short video duration segment as opposed to all its competitors in the space, and it doesn’t face direct competition yet from any streaming services. Even if the entire product base of streaming services gets exhausted, YouTube still has some of the many channels of its revenue generation and customer acquisition.

Reference Links

https://blog.hootsuite.com/youtube-stats-marketers/

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/youtube-stats/

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/

https://www.omnicoreagency.com/youtube-statistics/

https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/

https://socialblade.com/youtube/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/478082/fastest-viral-videos-views-in-24-hours/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#New_revenue_streams_(2013%E2%80%93ongoing)

https://www.softwarefindr.com/youtube-statistics/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube

https://www.statista.com/statistics/373729/most-viewed-youtube-channels/