Mark R Robertson -

In May 2013, we wrote about the fact that 100 hours worth of video was being uploaded to YouTube every minute. 18 months is a lifetime on the Internet, so we suspected that this metric was well out-of-date. Although YouTube hasn’t updated its own statistics page, we now know that a staggering 300+ hours worth of video content is being uploaded to the site every minute. That’s the equivalent of 12.5 days worth of uploads every 60 seconds.

Update November 2015: Google has confirmed that 400 hours of video are being uploaded but we forecast the figure is nearer to 500 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the new statistic at the company’s ‘Brand Lab’ partner program session in New York last week, but there hasn’t been an official announcement from the search engine giant as yet. Which is a little odd, considering the amount of headlines Facebook’s share of the video consumption market has generated.

300 Hours Uploaded Every Minute = Even More Opportunity

There may be a three-fold increase in video uploads, but really inspiring, engaging, and relevant content still has every opportunity of being discovered on the site. I’ve never really understood the argument that the more video content gets uploaded to YouTube, the more ‘crowded’ it becomes, and the less chance that creators have to be heard. You don’t really hear the same discussions about the Internet itself. Not once have I heard of a brand declining to go live with a site because the web is already saturated with them.

Yes, there are millions of videos on YouTube, just as there are millions of websites, and social media accounts. You don’t have to aim to go viral every time you upload a branded video, you just need to create the kind of content that YOUR followers can engage with. Use the platform to build that crucial relationship with a target audience who will watch your videos, engage with them, and share them with their social networks. By following the best practices outlined in the YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands, every brand has an opportunity to use YouTube to build visibility, and connect with viewers.

Earned Media: More Video Uploads Could Benefit Your Brand

We’ve written a lot about earned media and the kind of boost that fan-created video content can give a brand. In the case of Minecraft, over 99% of the views generated around its content is for user-generated videos, not for any of the Minecraft branded videos. That’s 31 Billion extra views that the company has been able to take advantage of. In fact, fan-made video game content, like walk-throughs, are crushing brands on YouTube by 19-to-1. We’re seeing the same kind of stats in the beauty and cosmetics vertical, where the major brands have only generated 3% of the 14.9 billion beauty-related video views on the site. So, brands still have an amazing opportunity to reach out to these fan influencers, and collaborate with them on new video content.

Want to know more about the world’s biggest video site? Here are 33 more amazing statistics and facts about YouTube.

BTW – In the 53 minutes that it took me to write this article, there have already been 15,900 Hours worth of video uploaded. If you take into account an estimated average of 5 minutes for each video, that means that there have likely been 190,800 videos uploaded to YouTube. WOW!