YouTube streaming 30B videos per month

The total number of videos that YouTube streams is seriously underreported by metrics firms like comScore and Nielsen because those firms only tabulate U.S. viewership, according to a TechCrunch post. While comScore and Nielsen report slightly different figures for the Google-owned online video giant, their estimates put YouTube's monthly U.S. video streams in the neighborhood of 6 billion to 7 billion.

But a YouTube employee told TechCrunch that the already huge U.S. streaming figures only amount to about 25 percent of YouTube's daily streaming load. Google confirmed it is streaming more than 1 billion videos per day globally, which would mean YouTube streams more than 30 billion online videos per month--a truly astounding number.

But while the user base for the site is surely gigantic, YouTube also has hinted that it doesn't see a real revenue opportunity yet in viewership from emerging markets, and as a result degrades the quality of the videos it streams to many such places. David Eun, vice president of strategic partnerships for Google, said last month that YouTube would not stream content if the business model isn't sustainable, and it's extremely unlikely that YouTube is moving the 23 billion or so videos it streams outside the U.S. at a profit. Given the likely economics of the situation, it would not be surprising to see YouTube retrench at some point in the next 12 months and drastically scale back the amount of video it moves globally.

For more:
- see the TechCrunch post here 

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