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YouTube - Statistics & Facts

Since its launch in 2005 and acquisition by Google a year later, YouTube has grown from a repository of amateur videos into the biggest online video platform worldwide. Featuring a wide variety of corporate and user-generated content that ranges from music and gaming videos to DIY’s and educational clips, the video giant is now a leading online destination for millions of users from around the world. In the United States, YouTube saw a reach of around 81 percent, and its mobile versions are enjoying similar success globally. The YouTube Music app was downloaded over three million times from the Google Play Store and around 1.3 million times from the Apple App Store in 2021, making it the world’s leading music app.

Web traffic overview

As of the beginning of 2021, a large part of the traffic to YouTube.com was redirected through social media: Facebook's own link shim l.facebook.com generated an average of 40 million monthly visits, while Reddit.com accounted for 26.6 million monthly visits. Between January 2020 and March 2021, users landing on YouTube have been increasingly visiting only one page before leaving the website, bringing the bounce rate to 52 percent in October 2020. Global users visited more YouTube pages when accessing the platform from their mobile devices, averaging 4,63 pages per session against the 2.84 pages visited by users on desktop devices. The leading websites that users visited thanks to a link on YouTube.com were Google.com, and Amazon.com, with more than 180 million visits and close to 55 million visits, respectively.

YouTube usage

As of 2021, there was an estimate of 2.24 billion YouTube users worldwide. The platform’s user base was composed of more men than women, with around 12 percent of YouTube total users being men aged between 25 and 34 years, and approximately nine percent being women aged 35 and 44 years. At the beginning of 2022, India counted the largest YouTube audience by far, followed by the United States with 240 million users on the popular video platform. In the U.S., the streaming service is particularly popular with younger internet users who sometimes even access the platform several times a day to entertain themselves or follow up on the latest news.

Videos on YouTube

In August 2021, more than 694 hours of video were streamed on YouTube every minute, reflecting the increased appetite for digital video content among internet users. Having started as a platform for original content, YouTube launched a new creative class of content producers who draw huge audiences to the screen and have subsequently become celebrities themselves. Swedish gamer PewDiePie, for example, has become a key YouTube figure and has amassed 110 million subscribers by September 2021. YouTube’s other main avenue is corporate media content such as official music videos, which can go viral within a matter of hours and reach 100 million views in less than two days, as was the case with BTS music video “Butter” in 2021. Due to the video format growing popularity and versatility, YouTube is one of the most effective platforms for attracting large audience: as of January 2021, Korean children’s song “Baby Shark” is not only the most watched YouTube video of all time, but also the first video hosted on the platform to surpass 10 billion view.

Advertising

Sizing YouTube global viewership, it comes as no surprise that the popular video platform has become not only a springboard for influencers but also a powerful money-making tool for Google and its parent company Alphabet. In 2021, YouTube generated global advertising revenues of more than 28.84 billion U.S. dollars and thereby accounted for approximately 11.2 percent of Google’s total annual revenue. Looking to profit from the platform’s massive audience, companies and brands like LEGO, Vat19, or Coca-Cola have started uploading video content on their respective brand channels. While advertising on YouTube is more expensive compared to other social media platforms, it certainly pays off, which is why marketers expect an increase in usage of YouTube for advertising purposes in the following years.
This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.
Published by L. Ceci, Nov 23, 2022

Key insights

Most popular online video property in the United States
Google Sites (YouTube)
Number of YouTube users worldwide
2.1bn
ACSI - U.S. customer satisfaction with YouTube
76/100 ACSI index points
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Mobile video in the United States
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