A YouTube video is viewed on a mobile device on average more than 200 million times a day, Google announced today. That’s a 3X increase over the end of last year. The service’s incredible momentum was announced alongside version 2.0 of YouTube Mobile for Android, which puts a heavy emphasis on music videos from Vevo, the YouTube joint project that includes content from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI.
App users will now be able to read artist bios, find related artists and ponder mobile advertisements galore in the new version of the app. People who use YouTube by mobile use it a lot. It will be interesting to see if making some of the most popular content, music videos, even easier to consume by mobile will lead to an even bigger jump in use than has been seen to date. One thing’s for sure, it’s now been 3 years since the words “broadcast yourself” were removed from the YouTube logo – and those days when the site emphasized user generated content sure are gone.
The growth rate of mobile YouTube is increasing each year. A 3X growth rate in 2010 can also be understood as 200% growth. That’s up from 160% in 2009. YouTube’s mobile efforts launched back in 2007. At that time it only offered a library of 12 daily videos selected and approved by operator partner Verizon and a total catalog of just 1,000 videos on Vodafone, its European partner.
In November, Google posted results from a survey of 16,000 users of the m.youtube.com website. That survey found:
- 75% of respondents say that mobile is their primary way of accessing YouTube
- 70% visit YouTube Mobile at least once a day
- 58% spend more than 20 minutes per visit to YouTube Mobile
- 38% feel that YouTube Mobile is replacing their desktop YouTube usage
In other words, the story seems to go like this: very loyal users have propelled a fast-growing inventory of mobile content to big levels of viewership and now YouTube is introducing a new app that will emphasize its partner organization’s music videos but increase monetization across the board for many video publishers.
Is that what the future of mobile video will look like well into the future? At least for the web’s biggest video site, that’s Google’s hope.
