Over 2 billion users watch YouTube Shorts monthly. This was revealed in Google’s Q2 2023 results. This latest number means YouTube Shorts registered 500 million more views in the last year as the service attained 1.5 billion monthly logged-in users last year.
This new development has positioned the video-watching platform as a major competitor to TikTok surpassing its over 1 billion active monthly users, and Instagram reels with 2 billion monthly users.
Google also revealed that YouTube was able to hit a valuation of $7.67 billion through ads and registered a growth of 4% year-on-year, according to Google’s analyst estimates.
Google’s future prospect for growth
Google’s app network has quietly become a huge growth engine over the years. The company has more adverts in smartphone apps than any other tech organization.
Google’s ad network segment has had three consecutive quarters of double-digit sales growth over the years. The company’s annual revenue amounted to 279.8 billion U.S. dollars throughout 2022, as seen in its quarterly revenue statistic data. Most of its earnings are powered by advertisement through Google sites and networks, making it as crucial to Google’s bottom line as its hardware, cloud computing, and app store divisions combined.
According to Google, YouTube Shorts is viewed by 150 million Americans on connected TVs, with signs of expansion abroad. The company stated it had 80 million paying subscribers across YouTube Premium and Music last year. However, there was no disclosure of the figure earned from the subscribers in the Q2 2023 earnings call. Recently, the video service increased the cost of the Music plan and the Individual Premium plan by $1 and $2, respectively.
Additionally, Google reported positive quarterly earnings, including ad and cloud revenue increases. The big tech company earned $74.6 billion according to its Q2 report, up from $69.7 billion in the previous quarter.
Read More; Why YouTube is the social media app with most users in Nigeria
YouTube in the past months
Earlier this year, YouTube announced some new changes. The changes are to make YouTube simpler for creators to engage with their audience and evaluate the effectiveness of their videos. One of them is Viewers’ subscription to a channel from the Shorts feed, making it simpler for content producers to monetize their work and generate a stable income.
Also, the company rolled out an update where Shorts will be featured in comments and appear as replies in the comments feed. The app also introduced data stories for postcards in YouTube Studio analytics that help break down complex topics about a channel’s performance into bite-sized pieces of information. With this new data story, creators are made to understand how their posts reach their audience.
Speaking of updates by YouTube, the company tried out two features on its platform. The first is a long-press function that allows users to enhance video playing speed by two times simply by pressing anywhere on the video player. The second update is a test that tries to improve users’ experience by providing larger previews when searching through a video, making it easier to discover key moments.
As seen in this report, the video-sharing website is currently looking into a three-strikes policy for customers who use ad blockers. It has been made clear by YouTube that utilizing ad blockers is against its Terms of Service. The business is dedicated to providing an engaging platform for content creators and consumers alike, even as it advances new features.
In April, the Google-owned company started offering pre-sales of the NFL Sunday Ticket subscription as a plan to expand offerings on its platform. Reportedly, Its latest offering will be activated in September. In addition to this, YouTube has also partnered with Warner Bros Discovery, an American cable channel to offer a Max-NFL Sunday TIcket bundle on YouTube TV.
YouTube Shorts is currently available in more than 100 countries worldwide. Given the success of YouTube Shorts alone, Google’s revenue is surely set to increase in comparison to the past.
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