A recent study conducted by m.youtube.com shows that the use of the mobile handsets to access YouTube is growing at a very rapid rate. The most surprising discovery of the study, though, is the number of users who access YouTube exclusively via mobile.
The study, which received responses from over 16,000 participants, found that 75% of users access m.youtube.com primarily through mobile and 70% of them report that they access YouTube Mobile at least once a day. 58% of users spend at least 20 minutes per session on YouTube Mobile and 38% of users feel that YouTube Mobile is fast replacing desktop YouTube usage.
Another report, which was published by Nielsen, shows that YouTube Mobile has now turned into the number one mobile video viewing site in the U.S. with over 7.1 MM monthly unique users.
The growing usage of the mobile to access YouTube is, of course, a good thing for YouTube Mobile, but it is also beneficial to advertisers as they can now reach a much larger audience if they advertise on m.youtbe.com.
As an additional incentive to attract advertisers, YouTube Mobile has now made it possible for advertisers to purchase a daily roadblock running across all available ad impressions for a 24-hour period. The ads run on the search, browse and home page of the mobile website. Campaigns for a variety of products, ranging from entertainment and retail to auto and consumer packaged goods have been successful on YouTube Mobile. Advertisers often run the roadblock to coincide with a product launch or a sales event.
Among the reasons for the growing use of the mobile to access YouTube, could be the fact that the newer range of handsets and Wi-Fi services now available provide a better user experience for video viewing, with better network speeds. Also, the cost of viewing or downloading videos on the mobile has come down considerably compared to earlier, thanks to the availability of better data plans.
