Amy Gesenhues says, “YouTube says people around the world are now consuming a billion hours of video content per day on the site. According to the announcement, the milestone was reached last year, but YouTube only shared the news yesterday.

“If you were to sit and watch a billion hours of YouTube, it would take you over 100,000 years,” writes YouTube’s VP of engineering, Cristos Goodrow, on the Official YouTube Blog, offering a frame of reference for the billion-hour statistic.

YouTube says its focus on time spent watching a video, versus video views, helps drive the number of hours users spend watching videos on the site.

“A few years back, we made a big decision at YouTube,” writes Goodrow, “While everyone seemed focused on how many views a video got, we thought the amount of time someone spent watching a video was a better way to understand whether a viewer really enjoyed it.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that the number of hours spent watching videos on YouTube has increased tenfold since 2012 when the site retooled its algorithm for video recommendations – aiming to increase user engagement and retention”.

YouTube viewers now consuming 1B hours of video content a day

Marketing Land

Sharing is caring