YouTube: 44% of Viewers Watch Via Embeds
Corrected.
YouTube today announced it has upgraded its embedded videos, which it disclosed account for close to 44 percent of its total views. That’s an insane amount, when you think about how many views YouTube does — 5 billion per month in the U.S. alone, according to comScore (which attempts to count embeds in its measurement). Forty-four percent of 5 billion is five times as much as the next competitor, Fox Interactive Media, had in total for the month of September.
Update: YouTube let us know its initial blog post was incorrect. Forty-four percent refers to the portion of YouTube viewers who watch embedded videos at least some of the time, NOT the percent of video views that come from embeds. So our initial take on the story is also wrong. A YouTube spokesperson said the portion of views that come from embeds is less than 44 percent, but declined to give a specific number.
The YouTube embed upgrades are high-quality thumbnails (yay, no more huge ugly fuzzy images dominating the page on NewTeeVee Station), a search box appearing when an embedded video stops playing (Hulu already does this), video annotations and closed captions (both of which were previously only available for videos played on YouTube’s site). However, while embeds may account for a lot of views, they do not include advertising.
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It’s so sad that there’s not an “op-in” embed advertising option through Ad-sense. So much unsold inventory everyday.
Tim Street on November 5th, 2008 at 6:08 pm - Permalink
Liz, as you noted, the % of streams attributed to embed (outside of YouTube) must be way lower than 44%. I read somewhere that it is closer to 15-20%. As noted in the comment above that’s a lot of ad inventory left on the table. However, its a significant piece of inventory that can be monetized.
Additionally, do you know what % of the UUs video views are outside of YouTube.com?
Akash on November 5th, 2008 at 7:55 pm - Permalink
Yup, it’s really sad thing that Google hasn’t allowed opt-in for Adsense like overlay advertising yet for all Youtube uploaders.
Even if Google could only monetize it to about $1 or $2 per 1000 views, that would still amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Not only missed revenue opportunity for Google, but most importantly missed income opportunity for independent Youtube content producers.
Actual monetization level for targetted overlay video adsense advertising will probably be closer to $5 or $10 per 1000 views.
Charbax on November 6th, 2008 at 9:40 am - Permalink
comscore said embeds were 28% a year ago.
It would be good to see what’s what here. Anyone have any other embed stats for other video sites?
gordonmattey on November 7th, 2008 at 7:56 am - Permalink
Whether it’s 28 or 44% - that’s a huge percentage. Think about how many content sites would love to get this level of exposure outside of their site.
Xavier on November 9th, 2008 at 1:33 pm - Permalink
It is 44%, they announced it at NewTeeVee Live.
gordonmattey on November 19th, 2008 at 9:28 pm - Permalink