A Decade of YouTube Stats, Laughs and Ads

YouTube turned the big 1-0 in February 2015. It’s hard to imagine this social media video platform has only been around for a decade. What did we do before we could watch just about anything we wanted on YouTube? YouTube has also made anyone with an Internet connection to the World Wide Web and a video recording device, a video publisher after setting up their own personal YouTube channel. Personally, I have used YouTube to share my own homemade videos with friends and family. I have also enjoyed watching hundreds of YouTube videos whether I go directly to the YouTube site or link through another site, usually Facebook. Professionally, I use YouTube to share marketing videos with prospective students at the community college where I work. YouTube is changing the world of advertising and marketing.

The Numbers

Statistics for YouTube are enormous – it’s the largest online video destination site in the world and the third most visited website. With a billion users, YouTube is touching almost one-third of all people on the Internet. Every single day, people watch hundreds of millions of YouTube videos, generating billions of views. The numbers are rising at a 60% growth year over year for time spent watching YouTube videos. People are accessing YouTube on mobile devices – a 100% increase – more than half of YouTube views comes from mobile. YouTube reaches more people ages 18-49 than any cable network in the United States. The number of people watching YouTube per day is up 40 percent year to year since March 2014. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

History

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen founded YouTube on Valentine’s Day in 2005, which is when Hurley registered the trademark, logo and YouTube domain. In May of 2005, a beta site was released. In December 2005, YouTube become a corporation having been funded by Sequoia Capital in November 2005. Google purchased YouTube in October 2006. The first video ever published on YouTube was called “Me at the zoo.” It features YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim talking about elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Ironically, Karim’s participation in founding the company was left out of the YouTube history.

Digital Video Advertising

Digital video advertising is a fast-growing segment with a 43.5% growth year over year. In 2017, digital video advertising is projected to make up 15% of all of the total digital advertising market according to eMarketer. What does that mean to you? If you are a marketer or owner of a company, are you using videos to propel your business? If not, you should invest in video advertising now to stay ahead of you competitors. Obviously, you should make sure your videos are posted on YouTube.

Along with paid placement, you can create video content that might go viral – or be shared freely among social media platforms. This is an awesome way to spread your message and let the public do the work for you. Adding humor goes along way in making videos go viral. Here are a few examples of YouTube commercials that were successful in going viral. These are some of my favorites?

Evian baby&me has 114 million views.