Dive Brief:
- Live video postings on YouTube are up 130% over the last year, and live video views are up 80%, according to a Financial Times report covered by Business Insider.
- YouTube says it differentiates itself from other livestreaming platforms due its ability to monetize live video through advertising, even through replays of no-longer-live content.
- "When consumers think about video, whether that’s on-demand or live, they think of YouTube," Neal Mohan, head of product at YouTube, told the FT. "Live is one part of the picture."
Dive Insight:
Video has become the go-to digital content type, especially on mobile devices, and is cutting into linear TV. Over the course of the recently completed Rio Olympic Games, traditional TV viewing of the events was down 21% over the 2012 London Games, but the live streaming options that NBC offered were extremely popular with users. The network’s live streams reached almost 50 million viewers — more than half of which was under 35 years old — totaling 3.4 billion streaming minutes across devices.
Live streaming video in particular has taken off this year. YouTube faces serious competition in live streaming video, with Facebook actively promoting its Facebook Live feature and Twitter aggressively inking live video deals with several of the major U.S. professional sports organizations, highlighted by the exclusive rights to live stream 10 NFL Thursday Night Football games this coming season.
YouTube parent company Google has been consolidating its social video efforts into YouTube. Google recently announced it will discontinue Google+ Hangouts on Air, its live streaming capability on Google+, redirecting users to YouTube.
