The pace of video uploads to YouTube continues to accelerate as more users flock to the online service, according to a new report from the Google-owned company. Though YouTube reported last March that users were uploading the equivalent of a season’s worth of the popular TV program 24 every minute, the pace has dramatically accelerated since then.
According to YouTube Director of Product Management Hunter Walk, site visitors are now uploading 35 hours of video per minute. If expressed in movie terms, he observed, this would be the equivalent of more than 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases appearing on the site each week.
“Another way to think about it is: If three of the major U.S. networks were broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for the last 60 years, they still wouldn’t have broadcast as much content as is uploaded to YouTube every 30 days,” Walk wrote in a blog.
Google’s YouTube Payback
Google’s return on investment for its purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 appears to be accelerating as well. “Google appears to be making progress in monetizing YouTube,” noted Al Hilwa, director of applications development software at IDC.
Anecdotally, Hilwa noted he has been seeing a lot more advertising and click-to-buy links on YouTube videos. “I have sensed that, for example, YouTube is one of the biggest sources for music listening, and I have noticed that they have added playlist functionality,” he added.
Last month, Google reported that YouTube display ads — together with non-text display ads on the Google Display Network and the DoubleClick platform — were clocking at an annualized run rate of more than $2.5 billion.
“YouTube is monetizing over two billion views per week,” which is “up over 50 percent year over year,” Google Senior Vice President…