YouTube becomes top pick for 4 out of 5 Indians online, Shorts usage grows

YouTube has become the platform of choice for four out of every five people online in India while its short-video making app has grown in popularity, with 96 per cent aged 18 to 44 in the country using YouTube Shorts, the company revealed on Wednesday, 27 September.

With an average of 70 billion daily views globally, YouTube Shorts continues to grow in popularity among viewers in India, with 96 per cent aged 18 to 44 using YouTube Shorts. 

Its average daily views have grown by over 120 per cent year-on-year (YoY) globally.

Shorts watch-time now also transcends devices with 88 per cent of online 18-44-year-olds watching short-form video content on a TV over the past 12 months. 

Viewers in India are also splitting their viewing time across many different video formats, spending no more than 21 per cent of their viewing time watching one format, the company revealed during the ‘YouTube Brandcast 2023’ event here.

“In the 15 years since we launched YouTube in India, there has been an extraordinary all-round digital transformation, in connectivity and in content, and today, people have created a boundary-less viewer experience for themselves that straddles across their smartphones and their connected TVs,” said Satya Raghavan, Director, Marketing Partners, Google India.

“We’re delighted that, in this rapidly-evolving landscape, YouTube is the platform of choice for four out of every five people online. This is a testament to the unflagging contribution and inventiveness of India’s vast and growing creator economy,” he added.

Amidst the surge in digital video services, online Indians are curating personal video universes consisting of an average of 5 content platforms, with YouTube emerging as their foremost choice for watching videos. 

About 33 per cent of connected TV consumers in urban India do not watch linear TV at all, with logged-in viewers averaging 2.5 hours of YouTube watch-time per day.

Together with the total hours of content uploaded to YouTube by channels in India growing by over 40 per cent in June 2023 vs June 2022, 35+ adults averaged over 70 minutes of YouTube per day in that month. 

As creators begin to tap generative AI for new ideas and audiences, the year has seen over 1.7 billion views of videos related to or using generative AI tools globally.  

About 70 per cent of 18-44 year-old viewers online agree that they are open to watching content from creators that use AI to generate their content,” informed the company.

YouTube also announced the launch of a suite of tools in its Ads Creative Studio. 

With these, marketers will now be able to easily create multiple versions of a single display or video ad customized for different audiences, locations, languages or contexts.