YouTube Celebrates One Billion Monthly Users

YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month.

I’ll let you have a moment so you can digest that nugget of news.

Need more? YouTube has more:

Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India.
PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!

Incredible, isn’t it? That something as simple as a website for silly videos could turn into such a massive powerhouse?

As a marketer, you need to find away to make this powerhouse work for you. Simply uploading a few videos isn’t enough to get you noticed. And believe me, you want to get noticed because YouTube is crawling with folks Nielsen calls Generation C.

Gen C is a powerful demographic – not only are they cultural tastemakers, they influence $500B of spending a year in the U.S. (U.S.Chamber of Commerce). Yet they can be a hard to reach audience for brands. Gen C are 45% more likely to be light TV viewers, choosing instead to consume many forms of content across many screens (GfK MRI Fall 2012).

Generation C is not an age bracket, it’s a group of people who are connected via the Internet. Google is planning a series of posts on their AdWords blog with more information about how this group functions and how you can reach them. They started this week with a look at Generation C’s YouTube viewing habits.

Connection – Gen C watches YouTube on all screens, constantly switching between devices.
Creation – Gen C is deeply engaged with online video, watching, creating and uploading videos on YouTube.
Community – Gen C thrive on community, defining what’s popular on YouTube by sharing videos with friends and family.
Curation – Gen C is made up of expert curators who care about finding content that matters to them.

Take a look at this: doesn’t matter if it’s a weekday or weekend, PC or Smartphone, YouTube access follows the same path. It’s high in the wee hours of the morning, drops when the folks head to bed for a few hours sleep then gradually rises to a late evening peak.

You can upload a video any time of the day or not, doesn’t matter. But if you’re promoting it through social media, send those posts out after 8 and you’re more likely to get a click.

13% of people do click social media links for videos, 18% if they find it on their smartphone. Less than 10% click through from an email or search for it in a search engine. So how do people find videos on YouTube? 57% simply search YouTube.