One second seems like a small amount of time, but in that brief moment, all the major platforms together are getting a combined total of more than 18,529 hours worth of video views. That might even be a conservative estimate.
To put that number into perspective, a year only has 8,760 hours. So at any given second, people —and possibly dogs — around the world are watching more than 2.1 years worth of video content, whether they be YouTube videos, TikTok videos, Instagram reels, or Facebook videos.
This is why it’s so important to keep video content in mind within your overall marketing strategy. If you post regularly, your videos may not become viral videos, but chances are they’ll get a decent amount of video views, especially if they’re high quality.
Which Platform Gets the Most Video Views?
The answer to this question is still YouTube. While TikTok video statistics have seen a huge rise over the years, YouTube is still king. As a matter of fact, it’s the second most viewed website in the world. There is only one place that gets more Internet users per day, and that is Google, which owns the video content company.
About 1 billion hours of YouTube is streamed every single day. This is why video marketers should consider using the platform, whether you run video ads or you just try to get a lot of video views with organic content.
With that being said, video marketing statistics also suggest that you should post video content on a variety of other platforms.
TikTok Video Marketing Statistics
TikTok started out as a place where young people would make simple music videos, but now it’s a force to be reckoned with, especially for people interested in video creation.
While YouTube is still the top dog, TikTok overtakes it in one key area: overall view time. The average user spends a little more than 58 minutes per day on TikTok. On YouTube, that number is almost 48 minutes.
However, YouTube still reigns in overall video views because of the sheer numbers of its users. Video marketing statistics show that Youtube has almost 2.5 billion active monthly users — an entire fourth of the human species. TikTok has a measly 1 billion monthly active users.
Of course, we’re being facetious when we say the word “measly.” One billion people is still 1/8 of the entire human race. It’s a huge number, and the amount of potential customers that can be included in there is why it’s a great addition to your overall video marketing strategy.
Meta – Facebook and Instagram
While Facebook and Instagram don’t have quite the same amount of video views as TikTok and YouTube, the consumption of video content on Meta platforms still isn’t anything to scoff at.
In 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram Reels was getting about 17.6 million hours of video views per day. Yeah, we get it, that comes from a two-year old article. In Internet years, that information might as well come from the age of dinosaurs. But it is the most recent number we could find. Other blog posts from 2024 — like this one — also report this number.
Meta seems to keep this type of information close to their chest because it came from some internal documents that reporters got their hands on. The article itself was about how the company was struggling to keep up with its competitors in terms of video views. Even so, it’s still a huge amount of time. So posting videos on Instagram is definitely worth it.
We ran into a similar issue with finding information about Facebook video views. The only video marketing statistics that we could find suggests that people are watching over 100 million hours every day. That number comes from an article that the company itself put out in 2016 — an even greater amount of time than The Wall Street Journal article. Since then — over the past few years — we’ve had the COVID epidemic, TikTok became a force to be reckoned with, and the entire video marketing landscape has changed.
So are Facebook videos getting more or less video views? The answer is we don’t know. While TikTok is taking a huge share of overall video consumption, the amount of monthly users on Facebook has nearly doubled since that number was given. In 2016, there were 1.86 billion monthly active users. Today there are 3.07 billion active monthly users.
Here’s What We Do Know…
Facebook has a crap ton of people who are using it every month, and they’re spending about 60% of their time watching video content. That’s over 3 billion people watching the content, driving up video engagement and video views.
This means that marketing professionals should take Facebook video seriously in their strategy.
How Did We Come Up With That 18,529 Number?
You might be reading this, thinking, “Hold on a minute, where in the world did they get that number from the beginning?
We got it from our own calculations using the available numbers we found on the Internet. Here’s a rundown:
- YouTube has reported 1 billion hours worth of video views. That’s about 11,574.07 hours per second.
- Facebook has reported that 100 million hours worth of video views. That’s about 1,157.41 hours per second.
- Instagram reels has about 17.6 million hours watched every day, which is about 203.7 hours per second. Just as a side note, we know that the Facebook and Instagram numbers are likely outdated, but we’re doing the best with what we’ve got.
- With TikTok, we had to be a little creative. If we assume that it has the same percentage of daily active users out of its monthly active user count as YouTube, then we first have to find that. If the average person watches 48 minutes of YouTube out of the 1 billion hours, then that’s about 1.25 billion people using that platform every day. That’s about 50% of the average monthly active users. If we assume TikTok is getting the same percentage of daily users vs. monthly users (which could be a leap), then it’s getting about 500,000,000 daily active users. Since they’re each watching about 58 minutes, that’s 483,333,333.33 hours of video views per day or 5,594.14 hours per second.
- When you total all of that up, you get 18,529.32 hours per second.
Which Platform Is Best For Your Video Marketing Strategy?
We wish everything was black-and-white so we could give you a straight-forward answer, but that’s not how things work with marketing videos. If you have regular organic video content, you should definitely use all of the platforms we’ve been talking about. But the type of audience you’re catering to could make a huge difference to what you’re focusing on.
Here are some of the basic demographic breakdowns of each platform:
TikTok
You’ve probably already heard that TikTok is where all the young people are, especially Gen Z. We’ll take that another step and say that it’s actually where they AND millennials are right now.
When you look at real social media video statistics, you’ll see that 18-24 year olds make up about 37.3% of users on the platform. That’s a huge chunk! But 25-34 year olds make up another huge chunk at 32.9%. That’s 70.2% combined!
So if you sell something that can be used by younger people between 18-34, you should definitely use TikTok as a marketing tool.
With that being said, it might be a good idea to put some marketing budget towards people in older demographics. People who are 35 and up still make up 29.8% of the total audience. When you consider that that’s a chunk off of a billion. that’s still around 298 million people.
But even if your audience was only 55 and up, that’s 5.8% of TikTok users. Out of 1 billion, that’s 58 million. That’s still a lot of potential video views.
In other words, no matter what age your audience is, mastering the short form videos on TikTok may be a great strategy for you.
YouTube
When you look at YouTube’s age demographics, you’ll find that they are a little more spread out than TikTok’s. The biggest age range is 25-34 at 21.5% with 35-44 in second at 17.9%. While 18-24 is the biggest demographic on TikTok, it comes in third on YouTube, but it makes up 15.7%. People who are 65 and up make up 9.5%, which is a bigger chunk than 55 and up makes for TikTok.
And then there’s the added fact that these chunks come from even bigger numbers. YouTube has almost 2.5 billion monthly users. So the smallest demographic at 9.5% still represents about 190 million people.
One of the great things about this platform is YouTube ads. There are so many videos that cater to a variety of interests. An experienced ad buyer will know how to serve the ads so video views are coming only from your target audience who would actually buy from you.
When it comes to organic reach, YouTube is a bit more of a slow burn. It’s better if you want to make long-form video than TikTok would be, but it might take some time. TikTok might be better if you want to do a lot of experimenting and see what kinds of videos stick out to your audience — whether they want short videos, explainer videos, long form videos, or even a quirky music video.
Don’t let the Gen Z tell you that Facebook is for old people because they’re definitely still using it. In fact, they make up 22.6% — that’s more than the biggest demographic of people who use YouTube. The 25-34 crowd still comes in first at 30.8%. Facebook also skews very young, with the 65 and up crowd making up 6.3%.
But again, it’s important to note that these demographics describe a lot of people. Facebook has over 3.07 billion active users. So even the smallest demographic makes up 189 million people.
While Facebook isn’t the best social media platform for organic reach, it can be a very powerful tool if you put a little bit of money behind your video ads. You can target people based on a variety of factors including age and interest. So whether you are looking for more website traffic for higher conversions, or you just want to increase brand awareness, Facebook may be a great place for marketing videos. Like YouTube ads, it’s a great place to get video views from the right people.
Your video strategy for Facebook can include all different types of online videos. User-generated content is great for Facebook and TikTok alike. You can also do product demos, testimonial videos, and even live video demonstrations. If your company deals with very technical issues, you can also upload explainer videos on this platform.
With Instagram, the 18-24 year olds are pretty evenly matched with 25-34 year olds at 31.3% and 31% respectfully. This platform is the one that seems to skew the youngest out of the ones we’ve discussed.
Instagram is especially useful for people in the lower age ranges, but — like we said about the other platforms — all the demographics make up a lot of people. There are about 2 billion monthly active users on Instagram. So even though 65 and up comprises only 3%, that still represents about 60 million people.
Get Help Creating Videos
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