Most YouTube Videos Get Few Views
By Anna Johnson on May 25th, 2009According to TubeMogul, the majority of videos uploaded to YouTube are seen by very few people.
53 percent of YouTube videos get fewer than 500 views, and 30 percent get fewer than 100 views. The big hits with more than 1 million views account for just 0.33 percent of all YouTube’s videos.
Why does this matter? Well, it probably matters to Google, the owner of YouTube. As Google embraces an advertising model for its online video site, it faces the reality that most of its content just won’t appeal to mainstream advertisers.
So even as Google must pay the huges costs of hosting all that video content, it will be unlikely to monetize it.
All of which means it may be a long road to profitability…
May 25th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Great take on the monetization of YouTube! It would be very interesting to know what area is getting all those hits. Even if your product wasn\’t in the same arena I would certainly be looking for a way to cross merchandise if possible.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:26 am
This finding isn’t all that surprising considering the source of most of YouTube’s videos. The vast majority of them are posted by teens, families, and others for the amusement of themselves and their friends. The quality is shakey, at best, and the content means little to anybody but those directly connected with the maker of the video. Sure, some of them find a much broader appeal, but it’s no surprise that the percentage thereof is miniscule.
The videos that go viral and get huge numbers of views are clever, original, and strike a chord with a large percentage of YouTube viewers, just like any other popular phenomenon, be it a song, a movie, a TV show, or whatever.
The bottom line, as always, is that there’s an awful lot of chaff out there and very little wheat.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:11 am
This is inevitable. There are a lot of videos on youtube. Youtube users have other things doing in their lives. They don’t have time watching videos online
Steven
November 19th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
there are just too many youtube videos out there on a variety of different topics. It’s hard to break through and get a lot of views