Lately, YouTube has been getting lots of attention from the press. Even VideoAge‘s Water Cooler — with this report — is getting in on the action and catching up with the video platform’s exploits.
The last time that VideoAge‘s Water Cooler mentioned YouTube was in a feature on November 2, 2023. And before that, on October 2 of the same year. But now, after reports about it in The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, one can no longer ignore the increasing role of YouTube in the larger streaming picture.
Firing the first salvo was the WSJ in a May report titled, “What’s on TV? For Many Americans, It’s Now YouTube.” Four months later, on September 26, 2024, The Economist shot back with its “YouTube’s do-it-yourself brigade is taking on Netflix and Disney” analysis.
Both publications reported that U.S. viewers spent approximately 10 percent of their TV screen time on YouTube — the WSJ said it was less than 10 percent, while The Economist said it was a bit more. Another discrepancy was The Economist noting that Disney’s share of television viewing was less than 10 percent, while the WSJ put it at 11.5 percent.
In terms of viewer rankings, according to the WSJ, NBCUniversal came third with under nine percent, Paramount was just below, followed by Warner Bros. above eight percent, and Netflix around 7.5 percent. Per The Economist, Netflix’s share of television viewing was instead more than eight percent and above that of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.
But besides such inconsistencies, the point is that both publications wanted to make readers aware that the Internet, and in particular Google-owned YouTube, has cut out the middlemen by letting people produce content themselves, and that user-generated videos draw the most viewers on YouTube. In the papers’ final analysis, YouTube is more popular than any other streaming platform.
YouTube has reportedly paid out an average of $23 billion a year to creators, while Netflix is expected to spend $15 billion this year on content, so it seems like you get what you pay for. Plus, YouTube shares 55 percent of revenues from ads with their creators’ long-form content, and 45 percent of revenue from ads for short-form videos.
PS: Facebook Removed this Water Cooler Post
“We removed your post. It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way,” was the message VideoAge received on its Facebook page after posting today’s Water Cooler feature about the popularity of YouTube. It is titled “YouTube: The Awakened Giant,” and Facebook specified that “This goes against our Community Standards on spam,” and added: “Our technology found your content doesn’t follow our Community Standards. As a result, our technology took action.”
Apparently, writing about a competing social media platform such as YouTube goes against Facebook’s rules.
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