YouTube recently announced that it now has over 325 million 18+ unique viewers month on month in India, citing Comscore data from May 2020.
The company credited the increase in viewership to the growth of content in different “genres, languages, geographies and age groups”. With over 2,500 creator channels now reaching over one million subscribers, YouTube has seen more than 45% growth in overall watch time in July compared to last year for the same period.
The company also revealed that watch time of Platform gaming videos in India grew by 2x as compared to Q2 2019 and baking videos grew by 3x over the same time. Wifistudy, with over 12 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion views, is now amongst the most popular education channels in Asia Pacific by subscribers.
The platform claimed that both large and small advertisers are leveraging the platform to drive business results and create unique collaborations with YouTube creators, helping brands get better returns over TV.
According to a meta-analysis of more than 100 media mix modelling conducted by Nielsen across multiple categories, it concluded that YouTube delivers 4.8x greater effectiveness than TV and impacts incremental sales.
And according to a combined study by Google and Kantar, YouTube is cited as the preferred platform for watching videos in regional languages, with Hindi leading the charts, followed by Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali, among others.
“India is seeing its biggest content revolution and there is a fundamental shift in viewing habits with two out of three Indians saying that they would rather give up TV than YouTube for a month. Online video today is not just about entertainment but also experiences and learning,” said Sanjay Gupta, country head and vice president, Google India.
Sourced from ETBrandEquity, Business Insider India, The Hindu Business Line
