The Cat Video Service

Do you watch the Cat video network?

That is how some like to talk about YouTube. A confusing perspective for anyone working in the media sector, considering how successful YouTube is at garnering eyeballs every single day.

This comes about because of comments my sharing a report that Digital i (click on the image to read the article and download the report) published a couple of weeks back that shared that daily viewing on YouTube is increasing significantly every year.

As it reports, YouTube Daily Average Viewing Minutes is rising from 87.2 minutes to 99.1 minutes, and Netflix falling from 100.5 minutes to 93.4 minutes. The rest of the report goes into interesting detail on comparing the viewing of the platform compared to other services, and in different countries. Interesting because we need to set this in context to what is overall average daily viewing, and what that viewing is part of - our average daily time for entertainment, not just video. It is important to note also that the viewing minutes in this report came from analysis of viewing from a large number of countries including US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

My sharing of the report on LinkedIn elicited various responses including the question as to whether the reported data was for YouTube TV or the ‘Cat Video service’.

I had to answer that this was about YouTube - which I will delightfully call the Cat Video service from now on.

The attempt to be dismissive about what videos are on YouTube also revealed a problem of perspective. YouTube is not just for cat videos, and it definitely is not about visits to the Zoo anymore. YouTube is a platform that contains a wide and diverse of programming, a lot of it being of a high quality that puts many current broadcasters to shame.

My own usage is a case in point, where I go to YouTube to access entertainment (broadcaster uploads of whole shows and clips), and a lot of specialist content of a professional nature that suits my interests in a professional and enjoyment perspective (anyone for a video podcast about DOCSIS developments?). My own viewing for that week was three hours and 13 minutes average daily viewing and that is not an outlier. My viewing dominates on tablets (the 12” B&W Portable of today) and on TV screen for me, all measured from within the stats that YouTube itself provides. Why not have a look at your own consumption in the app?

Many others are clearly finding enjoyable programming on the YouTube platform, and at the figures that are being discussed for the average across multiple countries, and age ranges/demographics shown in the report, it is quite a dominant platform for where the eyeballs go. After all, many countries today are seeing over four and a half hours of viewing on all platforms every day - an amount that is now limited now by the time left in the day after the expansion of ability to view through the deployment of smartphones throughout the 2010s.

And this is a key takeaway that we should all have now about viewing of content, and for general entertainment for that matter - we are now running at the buffers of how much time is left in the day, from watching video, listening to music, playing games, listening/watching podcasts and everything else. There is no increase in the amount of entertainment time unless we work less, or be less social with our friends and family. It is a zero sum game that YouTube, Netflix, other streamers and broadcasters are now competing for. What that means is that viewing figures for each piece of content is now on a downward spiral, as we have a massively diverse range of content and entertainment to play with in our waking hours. This is a key point for those who are competing for ad dollars (and pounds) with YouTube.

The viewing figures are more about the total service viewing, than about the single programmes or movies. And that is exactly why you will see every service diversifying their distribution and content mix to include more than movies and series - the diversified content is where the stickiness is, as seen by what YouTube provides - everything and nothing.

Even some cat videos... although I like Instagram for my cat videos these days, and I do have a nice line in Rabbit videos.