As we’ve said before, video needs to be a part of your digital marketing strategy. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that YouTube has surpassed 1 billion hours of videos viewed per day. This represents a ten fold increase since 2012. Back in 2012, projections estimated that they would only reach 400 million hours viewed per day. Even more astonishing is the amount of videos uploaded per minute to YouTube. About 400 hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube per minute, equaling 65 years of video per day.
YouTube was able to increase viewership hours by creating and modifying their algorithms. Through machine learning they’re able to decipher between single interest videos and actual user preferences towards videos. YouTube has teamed up with Google Brain, allowing them to better understand the content of videos, and which users are going to like them.
To say that YouTube was able to achieve such amazing results from their updated algorithms alone would be misleading. YouTube benefits from being owned by Alphabet, Inc. the parent company of Google. According to the StatCounter, Google accounts for 93% of internet searches. Google also embeds YouTube videos into search results. It also pre-installs the YouTube app on all Android devices. Android devices account for 88% of smartphones.
Still, the increase in viewing hours may not be pushing profits higher. The last time financials were reported was 2014, when YouTube revenue was around $4 billion, and people familiar with YouTube’s financials stated that they were roughly breaking even. Since YouTube is owned by Alphabet, they’re in the lucky position where they don’t need to worry about making a profit, and like most tech companies, they can focus solely on growth.
All this serves as further evidence that incorporating video should play a big part of your overall digital marketing strategy. We’ve worked with and witnessed numerous practices that are able to do it effectively. Interested in how you can? Give us a call.
