Each year Mary Meeker of Kleiner-Perkins has given her viewpoints under the umbrella of ‘Internet Trends’. This year’s report in my estimation would take most people 15 minutes or less to scroll through the deck. I believe it’s worth your time. I came away feeling that YouTube should be considered the go-to platform for most Americans. I had not thought of it that way prior. It’s worth remembering that when Google purchased YouTube in November of 2006 for $1B people were scratching their heads as to why. That’s hardly the case today as YouTube is the foundational video-watching platform (it’s not really an app).

Rani Molla of Recode did a nice summary of Ms. Meeker’s 294 (short and snappy) slides.

The full transcript of Ms. Meeker’s remarks can be found here and they are worth reading.

There were many interesting data points in the presentation – a few of my own highlights:

• Slide 19 indicates tremendous popularity of mobile payment in China The U.S. lags far behind in mobile payment adoption.
• Slide 62 notes that 49% of product searches begin on Amazon.
• Slides 76 and 77 note the focus on CLTV – customer lifetime value. That brought a smile to this direct marketer.
• Slide 85 – I personally was surprised that people view products on YouTube so frequently before buying them – likely on Amazon.
• Slide 192 how ‘query growth’ for Google Searches ‘Near Me’ are increasing much more than anything else. Location in mobile search is indeed everything.

If you are interested a few other resources you might want to check out

This report from Brandwatch offers some very interesting statistics on YouTube.

Finally the Pew Internet report from March of 2018 also is worth your time.

The statistics here on YouTube are quite compelling.  Because YouTube is a platform and not an app it sometimes is not considered a direct competitor to FB, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram etc. But when it comes to time that people spend watching, interacting etc, YouTube is impressive.

Keep in mind that while many companies block employee access to social media sites, they don’t normally block YouTube.

Think about the ‘screen time’ you spend and how much of it ends up on YouTube. Do you find it to be increasing year to year?