Youtube

YouTube is a long form video watching platform and app owned by Google. The main way people use YouTube is through watching the videos that pop up on the YouTube Home page, watching in the suggested videos section to the side of a video they’re already watching, going to a YouTube channel and seeing a full list of videos that channel uploaded, or by using the search bar at the top.

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People use YouTube for an incredibly diverse range of reasons. Most users watch YouTube videos for entertainment, such as watching sports highlights, gaming videos, listening to and watching music videos, following YouTube personalities and celebrities and more. However, many also use YouTube to look up questions and find instructional or educational videos like tutorials, cooking instructions, information, and news.

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“An average user on YouTube spends around 20 hours a month watching YouTube videos!”

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Anyone can post a video of any length to YouTube for free, and this video content gets sorted by its type: A “video” which is a horizontal video of any length, a “Short” which is a vertical video between 3 seconds and 3 minutes, or a “Livestream” which is a live video that includes an on-going livechat as the video is airing.

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To keep the platform free to use, YouTube runs advertising on the platform in the form of promoting videos on the home page, search results and suggested videos panel. It also runs adverts played at the start, beginning and even in the middle of videos.