1.5 billion active users per month turn the platform IGNORE INTO an operations center for advertisers

For years, YouTube has managed to keep some of its statistics secret, but its monumental video reproduction figures and the dozens of people – especially young people – who reach millions of fortunes each year by publishing videos, show that the platform is a gold mine that just starts to shine.

Lea en español: YouTube: El oro detrás de los videos de gatitos

YouTube was born in 2005 as a specialized page to host and watch videos at no cost. A few months after its launch, YouTube received millions of visits per week and that is why Google decided in 2006 to buy it for 1,650 million dollars.

Since then the platform has become the second most used search engine on the Internet and the first of its kind, getting to change the rules of the game in the production and distribution of audiovisual content, since under certain requirements, upload, view, share and comment is free.

According to YouTube figures, every minute 300 hours of video are uploaded to the platform. 2.4 billion people consume daily content in digital video, this corresponds to almost a third of the global population or the entire population of Europe, Africa and Latin America combined.

Of this portion, YouTube accumulates more than 1,570 million active users per month who watch a total of 5 billion videos per day. And although these figures still can not overcome the audience on television, they did become a mandatory window for advertisers who want to reach a higher percentage of potential customers and better segmented.

You may also be interested: Learn how Netflix reached 125 million users

A business of 15 billion dollars per year?

Alphabet, the multinational that since 2015 became the parent company that includes technology divisions such as YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Google, has never revealed the exact figures on YouTube's annual earnings. However, some analysts estimate that the profits attributed only to the sale of advertising space in their videos, reached in 2017 the 15,000 million dollars.

YouTube is in 88 countries around the world and available in 76 languages. Of its 1.5 billion active users, 50 million are producing content with the hope of someday receiving profits for the views, and another 30 million are consuming videos on the platform every day. All users categorized by age, gender, interests, geographic location and latest movements on the web.

In this way, the third of the population present on YouTube we become a valuable catalog that is offered to advertisers.

Towards the distribution of wealth

YouTube changed the dynamics of creation and distribution of content, allowing anyone to launch their audiovisual creations to the digital world. This was how the platform opened the way to an army of creatives who, with blogs, tutorials, comic videos and a multitude of other topics, became a fundamental part of the technological giant.

This population, mostly millennials or young people between 18 and 35 years of age, is known as youtubers or influencers and can get to billing high fractions of money, when receiving commissions from YouTube for the advertising scheduled in their videos with millions of views. According to statistics collected by Business Insider, the highest paid YouTube stars earned a cumulative total of $ 127 million in 2017.

The economic success and social influence gained by these young people has mobilized an extensive number of users to create their videos in order to monetize them. However, the equation is not as simple as it seems, since YouTube under a wide range of factors, only pay between 25 cents and 4 dollars for every thousand views.

Still, it is estimated that some of YouTube's most viewed videos like 'Despacito', 'See You Again' and 'Gangnam Style', have won between 750,000 and 12 million dollars, only in visualizations.

First video uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2005 by one of the founders of the platform, Jawed Karim

Between censorship and controversy

Despite the unstoppable growth of YouTube in all its ramifications, the company has faced serious accusations for the lack of surveillance of the contents uploaded by users.

According to information published in a recent article by Bloomberg, several of the shootings and attacks occurred in recent years in the US. They have involved the platform, either because the attackers have created their homemade weapons through YouTube tutorials or because they have used that channel to spread radicalist messages.

YouTube is blocked in North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Turmekistan, and China. The latter represents a significant blockage of the market for the platform, since the digital consumption habits of its users and the population number translate IGNORE INTO several billions of dollars that are not received each year.

Latin American Post | Krishna Jaramillo

Translated by "Conozca las astronómicas cifras que hacen de YouTube una mina de oro"