The Accelerated Growth of Online Video Fueled by Migration to Mobile Devices

By YouTube InSites Archives
Cover image for  article: The Accelerated Growth of Online Video Fueled by Migration to Mobile Devices

This year we are witnessing the growth of online video brought to life in the quality of the Digital Content NewFront events that are unfolding. Being the largest online video platform, we at YouTube see this growth from the driver’s seat.

We had our NewFront event last week at Madison Square Garden. It was a great night of celebration with many of you. It felt like the entire brand advertising industry had come to celebrate the growth of online video with us. This year is extra important since it marks YouTube’s 10th birthday.

I wanted to write this post to give a sense of the growth of online video with some of the stats and insights we released last night at Brandcast. I hope this serves as a valuable piece of reference for brand advertisers and media executives who are seeking hard data to assess the size of online video for their media budgets. We have worked with Ipsos, Nielsen, Millward Brown and MarketShare Partners and leveraged our Google Brand Lift Solution and Data to be able to provide the below stats and insights.

Reach and engagement is growing, especially on mobile …

We’ve come a long way over the past 10 years. But while we’ve grown bigger, we haven’t stopped growing. As of February 2015, according to Nielsen US panel data, YouTube reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the US. And, YouTube does this on mobile alone.4

It is not only YouTube’s reach that is growing. YouTube visitors are growingly more engaged. Watch time on YouTube is growing faster than it has in years, up 50% year over year (YoY).1And mobile watch time is rising even faster, up 90% YoY.2 As our watch time has accelerated, so has the number of people tuning in to watch on a daily basis. The number of people watching YouTube per day is up 40% YoY since March 2014.3

... And the ads are driving results!

Last year we introduced Google Preferred as part of our NewFront offerings. As you probably know by now, Google Preferred offers access to the YouTube channels most popular with the US 18-34 audience. Arranged into a series of vertical lineups, Google Preferred features the top 5% of YouTube channels for a given category, based on audience popularity and passion. Results so far indicate the advertising on Google Preferred channels is working well for brand advertisers:

  • 94% of US Google Preferred desktop campaigns measured from May 2014-Jan. 2015 saw lifts in ad recall, with average increases of 80%.5
  • 65% of US Google Preferred desktop campaigns measured from May 2014-Jan. 2015 saw lifts in brand awareness, with average increases of 17%.6

Separately, we see how advertising on YouTube drives ROI. As part of our ongoing partnership on media mix modeling with MarketShare partners, a recent study of 2012-2013 U.S. media spend for action movies indicated that shifting TV spend to YouTube would dramatically increase overall ROI. At 2012-2013 spend levels, a 20% shift from the TV budget to YouTube would have increased marketing-driven sales by 25% during that period.7

Collectively all of these stats show a clear momentum for online video and YouTube. I sometimes pause and think how it could be amazing to look back to the present time in 5-10 years and recount the times of change and transformation we live in. We are grateful to our users, viewers, creators, brands and the entire online video ecosystem who fuel this growth and help us write this story, as we celebrate Youtube’s 10th birthday.

Sources

1 YouTube global data 2013-2014.
2 Watch time for smartphones and tablets, YouTube global data, 2013-2014.
3 YouTube global data, March 2014 vs. March 2015.
4 Google-commissioned Nielsen study, December 2013 - February 2015. Audience Reach among people 18-49 for YouTube (mobile only) and 124 U.S. cable networks individually (television only).
5 Google, “Brand Lift Meta Analysis” study, February 2015.
6 Google, “Brand Lift Meta Analysis” study, February 2015.
7March 2015 Google-commissioned Media Mix Optimization analysis powered by MarketShare Decision Cloud.

The opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Media Village management or associated bloggers. Image at top courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net.

 

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