Despite plenty of innovation in the field, it seems impossible for any online video platform to dethrone YouTube. In January 2012, Techcrunch calculated numbers reported by YouTube and Reuters to find that Internet users watched 4 billion videos on YouTube per day.
When you average it out, that means each viewer watched 23 hours of YouTube videos in one month. That’s almost a whole hour a day, which is quite a bit of time to devote to a website dominated by 5-minute videos of weird pet tricks.
Every minute that passes, another 60 hours of video is uploaded to the site.
Of course, Hulu and Netflix also attract tons of subscribers. In March 2012, Statistic Brain counted a total of 23 million Netflix members with streaming subscriptions. Over the course of a year, those members stream about 2 billion hours of video.
All of this mean that video ads are here to stay. With so many people glued to their screens, video ads are often the best ways for websites to generate revenue. In February 2012, Americans watched 8 billion video ads online.1.7 billion of those ads were watched on Hulu.
The message is loud and clear. If you want to advertise your company’s products and services, compelling video content for the Web is a viable option.
Google has long been the master of Internet advertising. It’s really no surprise that the company bought YouTube. They were essentially made for each other.
Advertisers, however, shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that Internet users will stare blankly at any ad they see. It’s difficult to gather reliable data on this, but everyone knows that people walk away from their computers during long commercials just like they used to run to the kitchen when ads came on the TV.
The key, therefore, is making video content that people like enough to share with their friends. Yes, a panda sneezed and 153 million people watched. Chances are that your company can’t create that level of cuteness on command. That’s why it takes a concentrated effort to make videos that people will share through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. It’s the wave of the future. You can either hang ten or fall into the surf.