Best Time to Post on X: Maximizing Engagement in 2025
By BrandwatchNov 7
When YouTube first made its way onto the internet, few people realized how many hours of video we’d be watching years later.
It seems the internet never gets bored of watching videos, so now there is an entire library’s worth of YouTube stats.
Instead of presenting you with the entire library, we’ve handpicked the 36 most interesting statistics and categorized them for you in one simple blog post.
YouTube history statistics
The domain name “YouTube.com” was activated on February 14, 2005
The first YouTube video was uploaded on 23 April 2005. Me at the Zoo shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo
On October 9, 2006, it was announced that YouTube would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion
The first adverts were rolled out in August 2007
In May 2010, YouTube served more than 2 billion views a day.
YouTube first streamed the US Presidential debates in 2012.
By March 2013, YouTube was seeing 1bn monthly active users.
YouTube user statistics
The platform has over 1.9bn logged in monthly users.
6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV.
By 2025, half of viewers under 32 will not subscribe to a pay-TV service
In an average month, 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube, while 90% of America 18-24 year olds use it
In 2015, 18-49 year-olds spent 4% less time watching TV while time on YouTube went up 74%
On mobile alone, YouTube reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any broadcast or cable TV network
You can navigate YouTube in a total of 80 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population)
The platform has also launched in over 91 countries
Ryan, better known as Ryan ToysReview, is the highest earning YouTuber, bringing in $22m in 2018.
YouTube usage statistics
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and second most visited site after Google.
YouTube is the 2nd most popular social media platform with 1.9bn users.
500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
We watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos a day, more than Netflix and Facebook video combined.
70% of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes.
The first video to hit one million views was a Nike advert featuring Ronaldinho.
The video with the highest number of views is currently the music video for ‘Despacito’ by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee. It has over 6.6bn views.
It took Gangnam Style, a previous most watched video, five months to hit 1 billion views. In comparison, Despacito took just 97 days.
The video with the most views that isn’t a music video is ‘Masha and The Bear – Recipe for disaster (Episode 17)’ by Get Movies. It currently has over 4bn views.
The most subscribed to YouTube channels belong to T-Series, followed by PewDiePie, and Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes (not included YouTube’s automatically generated channels).
The most-disliked YouTube video is YouTube’s own ‘YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind’. The most-liked YouTube video is our familiar friend ‘Despacito’.
The most-watched video of 2019 was Con Calma by Daddy Yankee & Snow. (Source: BuzzSumo YouTube Analyzer)
The most-upvoted video of 2019 was Señorita by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. (Source: BuzzSumo YouTube Analyzer)
The most-downvoted video of 2019 was YouTube’s own 2019 rewind. Ouch. (Source: BuzzSumo YouTube Analyzer)
On average, there are 1,000,000,000 mobile video views per day.
The most searched term on YouTube is ‘despacito’, followed by ‘bts’. In the US the biggest search term is ‘pewdiepie’. (Source: Ahrefs).
81% of US parents use YouTube to find content for their children.
Over half of YouTube users use the site to work out how to do things they’ve not done before:
YouTube marketing statistics
Among millennials, YouTube accounts for two-thirds of the premium online video watched across devices.
9% of U.S small businesses use YouTube.
As of Nov 2018, YouTube has paid out $3 billion to rights holders since 2007.
The number of channels earning six figures each year on YouTube has increased by 40% year on year.
The most popular branded channel, after T-Series, is the WWE’, which has amassed over 53m subscribers.
Viewers who complete TrueView ads—watched to completion or at least 30 seconds—were 23 times more likely to visit or subscribe to a brand channel, watch more by that brand, or share the brand video.
Viewers who are exposed to TrueView ads but who don’t watch to completion are still 10 times more likely to take one of those actions.
When brands use TrueView, they see views of previously existing content increase by up to 500% after posting new videos.
As of Jan 2020, the 93% of the most-watched videos were music videos.
Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands are collectively uploading a video to YouTube every 18.5 minutes.
The same brands have an average of 2.4 channels.
Searches of “how to” videos on YouTube are growing 70% year on year.
Crazy, mind-boggling numbers. If you are simply a YouTube viewer who wanted to know the numbers behind the magic of online video, I hope these statistics have left you suitably impressed. Now get back to the cat videos.
If you are a marketer who is trying to decide if online video is a good way to reach your audience, these YouTube stats should demonstrate the amazing reach that can be had on YouTube.
Now get back to making those great videos. And while you’re at it, grab a free demo of Brandwatch and see how we can help maximize your marketing efforts.