YouTube is a free online sharing video service where you are allowed to view, upload and share your video content. It was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen who were ex PayPal employees. While at PayPal they saw the power in simplifying a process and giving everyone a solution.
Since 2005 the site has gone from strength to strength and you really should be adjusting your online marketing strategy to include YouTube. Within three months YouTube went from zero to over four million visitors to their site. Today the number of visitors continues to grow. Did you know that the average YouTube user will spend between 15 and 25 minutes a day on the site?
In 2006 YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. Now the world’s biggest search engine had teamed up with the biggest online video content provider.
It was reported in February 2011 that YouTube has 490 million unique users around the world each month. They account for approximately 92 billion page views per month. This is staggering when you think about it. It has been noted that we spend about 2.9 billion hours on YouTube per month.
YouTube streams a variety of video content including TV shows, music videos, commercials, movies and also amateur content. The growth of the site far exceeded other major websites such as Craigslist, eBay, Blogger.com and MySpace.
Although online content has been around for quite some time, before YouTube came along there was no real way of sharing this content. Videos took a long time to load and could be quite long. Specialised software was needed to view videos. It was all a little frustrating to say the least. YouTube created a revolution by allowing people to watch video in their web browsers as well as embedding YouTube video in remote websites. This means video can be shown in Facebook, MySpace or your own website.
The playback of YouTube videos is a smooth process compared to what came before it. The video starts almost instantly and you pause, rewind or forward. No lag or jerkiness is present and this makes it a pleasure to watch.
How Does This Apply to Internet Marketing?
Online video content is the fastest growing media there is and shows no sign of slowing down. You really should be taking advantage of it to market your own business, product or service. YouTube can be used to get your message across and drive massive traffic to your website. Think of all the potential subscribers you could be getting. What about sales as a result of this massive traffic? It really is a win situation for your business and if you had not thought about it before then it is time to do so now.
Video marketing is low cost when compared to other marketing methods. It is free to host your video on YouTube. Some other companies will actually charge you for hosting a video. Also the more views your video gets the higher up the rankings it will move. Higher rankings mean more traffic and again more sales for you. It is much easier to rank a video than a website for example. It may not have the same prestige or power as ranking a website, but it can certainly produce impressive results. youtube watch hours
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