When it comes to video marketing, few platforms are as effective as YouTube.
From big brands and high-budget TV shows to talented content creators and musicians, YouTube has become our go-to place to stream videos we enjoy.
Which makes it the perfect platform for your video marketing journey.
Here are the most important marketing statistics about YouTube every marketer should remember in 2023!
What is YouTube? ▶️
YouTube is a website launched in 2005 where users can upload, view, and share videos.
Users can create channels and playlists, subscribe to other channels, and interact with content through likes, comments, and sharing. The platform also offers various features such as live streaming, advertising, and monetization for creators.
In the years since its humble beginning in 2005, YouTube has become an entertainment powerhouse. Here are just a few of the changes that contributed to its growth:
- Expansion of content: Initially, YouTube was primarily a platform for individuals to upload and share user-generated videos. However, over the years, it has evolved to include content from a variety of sources, including professional productions, news organizations, and brands.
- Monetization for creators: In 2007, YouTube introduced its Partner Program, which allowed creators to monetize their videos through advertising revenue sharing. Since then, the platform has expanded its monetization options to include merchandise sales, channel memberships, and Super Chat.
- Mobile optimization: With the rise of smartphones and mobile devices, YouTube has adapted to ensure its content is optimized for mobile viewing. The platform has also launched dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.
- Live streaming: In 2011, YouTube introduced live streaming capabilities, allowing creators to broadcast live events and interact with their audience in real time.
- Algorithmic recommendations: YouTube’s recommendation algorithm has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, analyzing user data to suggest videos that are likely to be of interest to each individual viewer.
- Community features: YouTube has introduced various community features, such as the ability to like and comment on videos, subscribe to channels, and create playlists. The platform has also launched a Community tab for creators to engage with their audience through posts and polls.
- Enhanced moderation: In response to concerns over hate speech, misinformation, and copyright, YouTube has increased its efforts to moderate content on the platform. This includes removing harmful content, providing authoritative information, and offering tools for users to report inappropriate and/or copyrighted content.
Why should marketers care about YouTube marketing? 🤔
- With 2 billion active monthly users and more than 500 hours of video being uploaded every minute, there are tons of reasons marketers should take advantage of YouTube:
- High engagement: YouTube users are highly engaged, with the average viewer spending over 11 minutes per day on the platform. This means that if you produce engaging and informative videos, you have a higher chance of capturing their attention and converting them into customers.
- Visual medium: Video is a powerful medium for storytelling and showcasing your products. You can use video to demonstrate how your product works, highlight its unique features and provide customer testimonials.
- Cost-effectiveness: Compared to other advertising channels, YouTube advertising is relatively cost-effective. You can create and upload your video content for free, and the cost of running ads is often lower than traditional advertising methods.
- Targeting options: YouTube offers a range of targeting options to help you reach your ideal audience. You can target users based on demographics, interests, and behavior, ensuring that your content is seen by people who are most likely to be interested in your product.
- Effective influencer marketing: Marketers can collaborate with YouTube influencers who have a large following to make sponsored content and reach their target audience. This can help increase brand awareness and credibility.
- Brand building: YouTube can be a great platform for building your brand and creating a loyal fanbase. By producing high-quality and engaging content, you can increase brand awareness, credibility, and loyalty.
- Sophisticated analytics: Besides audience behavior data and performance tracking, YouTube Analytics also helps monitor engagement metrics and advertising performance. It also provides recommendations and insights on how to optimize your videos and channel for better performance.
- Numerous advertising options: YouTube has a wide variety of video advertising options to suit marketers’ needs. These include TrueView in-stream ads, TrueView discovery ads, skippable/non-skippable in-stream ads, and bumper ads.
How effective is YouTube marketing? 🧐
In short, very effective.
- Statista reports that YouTube’s global advertising revenue was close to 30 billion USD in 2022. There’s huge potential for businesses to not just break even, but actually make a profit from YouTube ads.
- Hootsuite says that 99% of these users are on other social media platforms, so there’s a huge chance for you to re-target your potential customers.
- In a study done in collaboration with Latitude, Google found that “59% of respondents agreed that ads on YouTube are more relevant than ads on linear TV or other streaming apps.”
- Kolsquare’s statistics support this. Their report discovered that “70% of people have bought a product after seeing it in a YouTube ad” in 2022 alone.
This is great news for any small business that’s on a budget or big brands looking to cut costs. Instead of including TV and a bunch of streaming apps into an already big marketing strategy, you can just focus on YouTube without worrying about losing a chunk of your audience.
- Since launching YouTube Shorts, Google also found that vertical videos “delivered 10-20% more conversions per dollar”, meaning that just by being active on Shorts, you can significantly increase your numbers.
The best part?
YouTube will automatically convert your landscape videos into vertical ones so long as you add vertical creative assets to your Video action campaigns.
However, to make your YouTube marketing effective, you need to produce high-quality and engaging content that resonates with your target audience.
You also need to optimize your videos and channel for better visibility and engagement, use targeting options to reach the right audience and track your performance using YouTube Analytics.
By doing so, you can create a successful YouTube marketing strategy that drives traffic, generates leads, and increases conversions.
YouTube marketing statistics in 2023 📈
So what do the numbers tell us?
We gathered the most relevant YouTube marketing stats and compiled them in the list below. We took the latest data on audience retention and engagement, watch time, user demographics, mobile usage, influencer marketing, CTRs/CPSs, as well as brand awareness for you to get the freshest and most accurate information.
The data comes from trusted sources in the marketing industry, including Hootsuite, The Social Shepherd, Influencer Marketing Hub, Backlinko, Search Engine Journal, and more.
The full reports are linked in their respective paragraphs.
YouTube marketing statistics on audience retention
- According to Uhuru Network, the average audience retention on YouTube floats between 50% and 60%.
This means that the average viewer will stick around for the first half of your video, which is much more reassuring than the average 30 seconds viewer retention rate on TikTok.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put effort into your intro. It’s important to catch your audience with a great hook, amazing visuals, as well as a clear and articulate presenter who can deliver your information well.
YouTube marketing statistics on watch time
The average watch time per video is hard to calculate just because of the sheer variety of video types on the platform. Some can deliver their information in 5 minutes while others may need as much as 4 hours to do a proper deep dive on a topic.
If we are to follow Uhuru Network’s findings, you should aim for an average watch time that’s half as long as the length of your video. For example, if your video is 10 minutes long, you want a total watch time of 5 minutes at minimum.
Watch time also affects your ability to monetize your videos.
- Search Engine Journal says that your channel must accumulate 4,000 total hours of watch time within 12 months, not counting views from Shorts, in order to qualify for monetization on YouTube.
YouTube user and demographic statistics
What does YouTube’s audience look like?
- According to a recent report published by Kepios, 45.6% of YouTube’s global users identify as female while 54.4% identify as male.
- As far as age goes, the same report estimates that the average age of YouTube’s users in 2023 is between 25 and 34. So if your target audience is millennials or older Gen Z, your brand has a guaranteed spot on the platform.
But just because they make up the majority of YouTube’s user base that doesn’t mean there’s no one else your brand can reach out to.
- Kepios’s report shows that users aged 18 to 24 make up 15.0% of the platform’s total ad audience and those aged 34 to 44 make up 16.7%. Even users between the ages of 55 to 64 make up 8.8%—that’s 221.3 million users who can potentially see your content!
- The report also tells us that Southern Asia has the most YouTube users (580.1 million in total), followed by Southeastern Asia (332.6 million) and Northern America (279.1 million.)
These jaw-dropping numbers prove that YouTube has a very diverse audience which increases your chances of finding new customers.
YouTube user statistics on mobile
Let’s not kid ourselves, the age of watching videos exclusively on our desktops is LONG gone.
And since the explosion of TikTok, we love reaching for our phones whenever we need fun videos to kill time with.
- In their 2023 report regarding marketing statistics for YouTube, Hootsuite lets us know that 22% of users access the site via mobile, spending close to 24 hours on the mobile app per month
- We also learn that mobile visitors access twice as many pages on YouTube than those on desktop.
- Not only that but YouTube Shorts gets an average of 15 billion views every day!
This goes to show the power of mobile, so if you want to start working on your YouTube strategy, make sure you have a plan for the app, as well.
YouTube influencer marketing statistics
When developing your YouTube marketing strategy, 9 times out of 10, you will dip into influencer marketing. After all, the potential to reach a wider audience through just one sponsored segment in a creator’s video is huge.
- In fact, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2023 benchmark report, influencer marketing is expected to grow to 21.1 billion USD in 2023.
And there’s a very good reason for that.
- The Social Shepherd reports that 6 out of 10 YouTube subscribers would follow product recommendations from their favorite influencers rather than TV or movie personalities.
This is because influencers offer a sort of relatability that celebrities don’t.
- Google discovered that as much as 70% of teenage YouTube subscribers find influencers more relatable than traditional celebrities.
If you’re planning on reaching out to an influencer to promote your product, you might be tempted to message big names with over 1 million followers, but there is actually a strong preference for nano and micro-influencers this year.
- In the same 2023 benchmark report, Influencer Marketing Hub points out that “39% of brands chose nano-influencers (1K-10K followers) as their most likely partners, followed by 30% opting for micro-influencers (10K-100K).”
There really is no reason why you shouldn’t at least try to include influencer collaborations in your YouTube marketing strategy for 2023.
YouTube marketing statistics on audience engagement
YouTube isn’t just a video-sharing website—it’s also a social media platform.
Influencer Marketing Hub tells us that the bigger your channel is, the more engagement you can get.
- They explain that channels and influencers with over 1 million subscribers boast a 3.40% engagement rate while “small YouTube channels with just 1K-5K followers only manage an engagement of 1.90%.”
Good engagement triggers the algorithm to recommend a video on YouTube’s homepage. The more people see the video with your product in it, the bigger the chances of your customer base growing.
Whether you are sponsoring a segment in an influencer’s video or you’re publishing a product demo or tutorial, make sure there’s engagement.
YouTube marketing statistics on CTRs and CPMs
Just like when it comes to watch time, the average CTR for a YouTube video depends heavily on the type of video you’re making and your niche—the smaller your target audience is, the more conservative you have to be about your click-through-rate.
- YouTube themselves say that “half of all channels and videos on YouTube have an impressions CTR that can range between 2% and 10%”.
- Databox estimates that the average CTR across all of YouTube is between 4% and 5%, based on their research.
The best tip we can provide is for you to check your CTR periodically and strive to increase it bit by bit. Don’t expect to grow from 2% to 50% in a span of a month—easy come easy go—but you should definitely focus on a gradual growth.
You can do this by constantly optimizing your video titles and tags, experimenting with CTAs, and getting creative with thumbnails.
- As far as the average CPM on YouTube goes, Thinkific reports that it’s roughly between 5 and 7 USD per 1,000 views across all industries.
- However, depending on your region, it can range between 4 and 24 USD.
- When setting goals for your CPM, keep in mind that according to the latest data by Backlinko, 42.7% of internet users use ad blocks.
- You also need to remember that 23.6 million users are subscribed to YouTube Premium, mainly so that they can enjoy ad-free content and exclusive productions, according to The Social Shepherd.
The usage of ad blocks and YouTube Premium will undoubtedly affect your average CPM, so make sure you keep your KPIs realistic.
YouTube marketing statistics on brand awareness
Think about the last time you heard of a product through YouTube ads.
Honey, Hello Fresh, Skillshare, and Nebula are just some of the brands that managed to grow either through paid ads or sponsored content on YouTube.
Of course, YouTube was just a part of their overall marketing strategy that helped them rent space in people’s minds but it’s impossible to deny the platform’s impact.
The numbers support this.
- According to Think with Google, more than 90% of users discover new brands and products on YouTube.
- Moreover, just holding people’s attention for 3 seconds increases your brand awareness, ad recall, and brand consideration.
If you want people to know about you, getting on YouTube is a fantastic option.
Wrapping it up 🎀
If you’re wondering whether it’s a good idea to include YouTube in your marketing strategy, it is.
With the right plan, YouTube can help you boost brand awareness, increase engagement, and turn a profit.
Frequently asked questions about YouTube marketing ❓
How do you do YouTube marketing?
Before you even create a YouTube channel, you need to complete three steps: define your goals, identify your target audience, and develop an initial content strategy.
Once you’re done, upload your videos. See which ones you’ll use in your paid ads and which ones are better suited for organic traffic.
The most important thing you need to do throughout your YouTube marketing journey is to monitor your performance. There is always room to grow and learn and you want to make sure you’re always on top of it. Pay attention to metrics like views, watch time, engagement, and conversion rates, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Don’t forget to optimize your YouTube channel, as well. It makes it easier for your target audience to find you.
What is YouTube marketing concept?
The concept of YouTube marketing is to use the popular video-sharing platform, YouTube, to promote a brand, product, or service.
It involves creating video content that is designed to engage and inform viewers, with the ultimate goal of driving traffic, generating leads, and increasing conversions. Such videos can include product demos, tutorials, customer testimonials, brand storytelling, and behind-the-scenes footage.
YouTube marketing also involves optimizing your channel and videos for search, promoting your content to your target audience, and monitoring your performance.
How is YouTube good for marketing?
YouTube has been in the top 3 social media platforms for several years now. It boasts over 2 billion monthly active users worldwide and hundreds of hours worth of videos arebeing uploaded every minute, opening the door for brands to find their target audience no matter how niche their industry is.
Of course, this also means that marketers will be facing some tough competition. If you’re a small business or a mid-sized brand that’s just getting a hang of socials, you will need to invest more time, money, and energy into a YouTube marketing strategy and it may take some time before you can see results.
That being said, there are countless examples of brands from various industries finding success on YouTube, including Steam, Hello Fresh, Skillshare, LEGO, Etsy, and NYX Cosmetics, among others.
