Watchtime

YouTube has also said that its watchtime has been growing 60% year-over-year. With some rough math, let's say then that YouTube now has around 650 million hours of watchtime a day. Facebook video could be seeing about one-sixth of the watchtime as YouTube. Because YouTube hasn't actually released an updated stat in a while, we still don't have a perfect idea of how YouTube and Facebook's platforms compare in terms of watchtime.

Jason Urgo, CEO of YouTube analytics firm Social Blade, told Motherboard that according to data pulled from over 12,000 channels over the month of May, "there is evidence that, on average, a video when viewed on mobile will have less watchtime than any other platform." He found that videos watched on phones and tablets averaged 3.5 minutes of watchtime while computers averaged 5.2 minutes. Televisions, unsurprisingly, won out with 10.3 minutes. "When taking a macro look into watchtime habits, yes there is evidence that shorter is better on mobile," he said.

To qualify for the YouTube Partner Program, a channel must meet the threshold of 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.

YouTube’s recommendation system is engineered to maximize watchtime, among other factors, the company says, but not to favor any political ideology.

Similarly, YouTube argues that they are not simply optimizing for watchtime but for user ‘satisfaction’ (Lewis, 2018).

“Over the past year alone, we’ve launched over 30 different changes to reduce recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation, including climate change misinformation and other types of conspiracy videos,” he [Farshad Shadloo] said. “Thanks to this change, watchtime this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 70 percent in the U.S.”

While they can certainly force feed more Canadian content to users, the move would likely backfire. This is because the path to virality on YouTube, TikTok and others depends on watchtime and engagement.

Watchtime continues to increase due to fun, engaging and versatile content offering - comparing H1 2023 to H1 2022, its growth was of 42%.