YouTube Marketing Statistics for 2020

The reason that YouTube statistics are so relevant to everyone is that it is of course, the biggest social media platform in existence, and in fact is bigger than every website other than Google. Whether you happen to be a novice looking to increase your subscriber count on YouTube, or a veteran video marketer trying to increase brand awareness through the platform, your first objective should always be to get a handle on YouTube statistics. Once you've done that, it will be much easier to stay abreast of statistics as they are updated periodically. The statistics shown below relate to the general categories about who is using YouTube, how they are using the platform, and the business implications of that usage.

Statistics related to YouTube users

Let's start out with the fact that YouTube now has in excess of 2 billion active monthly users, and the user base continues to increase each and every year. The number of users still continues to grow, as it has added approximately 250 million users since May 2018. Another impressive statistic shows that approximately 73% of all American adults use YouTube at some point during their weekly activities. That is well above even Facebook's usage threshold, which is at 69%, and is nearly twice as much as Instagram's count at 37%. Any research program you care to buy into will show that YouTube is easily America's most popular online platform.

Another impressive statistic relative to user habits regarding YouTube is that approximately 81% of all those individuals between the ages of 15 and 25 in this country make use of the platform. Generally speaking, the younger the age group, the more tightly associated those individuals are with YouTube. It reaches more individuals between the ages of 18 and 34 than any television network in existence today. On top of all that, somewhere around 15% of YouTube's total site traffic originates from U.S. users, which should give some indication of its popularity in this country.

Usage statistics on YouTube

Every minute of every day, people upload approximately 500 hours of video to the YouTube platform, and this represents a 40% increase across the years 2014 to 2019. This clearly demonstrates that users' appetites for video is not only insatiable, but that it continues to grow. The average amount of time that a typical YouTube user spends on the platform amounts to about 11-1/2 minutes for every visit. This represents a significant increase over the prior year, when the average time spent on the platform was only eight minutes and 41 seconds.

Interestingly, the vast majority of what people watch on YouTube, some 70%, is actually determined by YouTube's proprietary recommendation algorithm. Most adults will agree with this statistic, saying that they either occasionally or routinely watch videos which have been recommended by YouTube. On average, every time a visitor comes to YouTube, they will scroll through 6.5 page views, even if what they are watching has been recommended by YouTube's algorithm.This means that most people don't settle for watching exclusively recommended videos, but are also quite active in their own way, and take the opportunity to explore new videos and new channels. It is also known that a mere 10% of the most popular videos shown on YouTube draw the widest audience, which amounts to nearly 80% of all viewers. Obviously this means that a very small subset of all videos and creators garner the majority of popularity on the platform.One statistic you may find particularly compelling is that despite the popularity of mobile viewing, big screens are also finding favor with the YouTube platform. According to YouTube, more than 250 million hours of viewing time is amassed every day by users on television screens. In fact, this happens to be the fastest-growing segment on the entire platform, with more and more people opting to view their YouTube videos on their big screens at home, in their living rooms.That's not to say that mobile is being left behind by any means, since 70% of YouTube views are still watched on mobile devices. However, this figure has been fairly steady since 2018, and has not shown any signs of serious increase. What you should take from this statistic is the fact that mobile viewing is still very popular, but is not growing nearly as quickly as watching YouTube videos on big television screens at home.

YouTube business statistics

A statistic which jumps right out at you in this area is the fact that videos which relate to a user's interest are much more appealing to them then videos which merely contain a celebrity whom everyone knows. If you're a marketer, this should tell you that your brand should spend more time learning about its target audience and what their interests are, rather than filling your videos with celebrities and influencers.A similar statistic shows that videos which are relevant to a person's interests are 1.6 times more valuable to users than those videos which may have high production values. When YouTube conducted a poll in this area, they discovered that 60% of the people who had watched their platform in the past day, said that they did so to find videos which had personal interest to them. This means that users don't consider the slickest and most expensive videos to be the ones they prefer to watch, but instead are much more inclined to watch videos which cater to their interests.Between the years 2017 and 2018, the viewing time for videos doubled with regard to identifying which product to buy. This means that marketers need to be aware that users are turning to the platform in increasing numbers to find out which products would be more beneficial to them. Of all those people who claim to have watched a YouTube video about a product they wanted to buy, approximately 80% of them ended up making a purchase based on that YouTube video. Of particular interest to marketing personnel should be the fact that 70% more YouTube users are becoming engaged with channels and creators, thus becoming loyal followers of particular brands which have uploaded videos of interest to the platform.