The video platform YouTube has become an integral part of our daily digital consumption, with 11.7 billion visits a month in the United States alone.
Launched in 2005, YouTube was acquired in 2006 by Google for US$1.65 billion. Since then it has grown into the second-largest social network in the world, second only to Facebook. The two ways to access YouTube are via a web browser, and its native app.
This article will delve into the nuances of YouTube user behavior in the USA in 2024 on these two interfaces. Thanks to comprehensive clickstream data from Datos and Android mobile behavior insights from MFour, we will uncover insights on how Youtube usage varies across web and app.
The data covers:
- Top channels by month
- Top videos by month
- Top 10 categories
- Top channels by category
- Top videos by category
- Popular times to watch YouTube
- Average video views and video length per use
Top YouTube channels
YouTube channels are the backbone of the platform, with popular channels garnering millions of loyal subscribers.
We had a look at which channels had the highest number of unique visitors per month over the course of 2024.
As you can see from the table, the top three channels on web and app were different from one another for the majority of months. For the web the most popular channel was penguinz0 (a channel for entertainment content including gaming, reviews, challenges, and humor), and in-app, 7clouds (a pop music channel).
The top channel rankings remain fairly consistent across web and app, but the impact of specific events during certain months can be seen. For instance, the public feud between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake in May 2024 pushed Kendrick Lamar’s channel that month into the second spot on both web and app, and Drake’s into third place on the app.
September, the start of the NFL season, saw the NFL channel ascend briefly to second place on web and third place on app. The US election in November is probably what pushed Fox News into the top 3 on the Web. It’s notable that music events affected both YouTube’s app and web, but elections only constituted major shifts on the web.
Top videos every month
Views are a significant metric on YouTube, along with subscriber counts, as these tend to be the main monetization metrics.
As you can see from the table below, there was much more crossover with web and app when it came to the videos that were viewed by the highest number of unique users. Five months of the year saw both web and app ranking the same video at the number one spots. There were even more instances (six) of the same videos appearing in the top three across devices, albeit in different orders.
Top categories
These were the top 10 video categories, based on the number of unique viewers, for both web and app.
It should come as no surprise, judging by the top channels and videos, that Entertainment topped the list for both web and app.
The rest of the categories are essentially identical, with most not being more than one point apart across devices.
Top channels in each category
The top 10 channels with the most unique video viewers in each category were as follows:
As you can see from the tables, three out of ten top channels overlap across web and app.
Notably, on app the top Education channel was “Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes”, which supports the image of busy parents keeping their children entertained on tablets, which we also saw in our study on Netflix usage on web vs app.
Top videos in each category
The top 10 videos viewed by the highest number of unique users in each category were as follows:
There is one video (“Goodbye Internet”) that overlaps across web and app, the rest are different.
Popular times to watch YouTube
Below are two graphs showing the distribution of YouTube viewing activity over the course of 24 hours, from 0:00 to 23:59, at 1-hour intervals, on web and app, averaged out for the year of 2024.
% of users = (number of users who were active in a given hour / total number of YouTube users during the day) * 100% (average over 365 days)
As can be seen on the graphs, the distribution is very similar over web and app. Both graphs show a gradual increase over the working hours, with a peak at 6-7pm on the web and the peak at 8-9pm on the app.
Late-night hours are more popular on the app than on the web and app users are more active in the first two hours after midnight. This makes sense, as people often use their phones or tablets in bed.
Top days to watch YouTube
What about which days of the week see the most activity on YouTube?
% of users = (number of users who were active on a given day / total number of YouTube users during the week) * 100% (average over 365 days)
When it comes to app users, the distribution is surprisingly flat: they use YouTube in a consistent way throughout the week. As for web users, we can see a slow decline over the week, with Monday being the most active and Saturday being the least active day.
Average number of videos viewed
These graphs show the average number of unique videos watched
% of users = (number of users who watched a certain number of videos per day / total number of YouTube users during the day) * 100% (average over 365 days)
Although the distributions of the graphs for both web and app look similar, the number of users who watched only one video per day is significantly higher for web. The app graph distribution is more even and doesn’t have such sharp spikes at the beginning.
Average watched Youtube video length
As for the length of watched videos, these two graphs show the average duration of videos selected by users to watch over a day (without assessing whether they watched the full video or only part of it).
% of users = (number of users whose average video duration was the number on the x-axis / total number of YouTube users during one day ) * 100% (average over 365 days)
The most common video length is 4 minutes for web users, while for app users it is 3-4 minutes, and this peak on app is much higher (9.5% and 9.6% respectively) than for web (6.3%). From 10 to 30 minutes on the web the distribution declines more gradually, whereas for the app the drop-off is steeper.
This makes sense given that entertainment and music are top categories on YouTube for both app and web, and most music videos are between 3-4 minutes long.
Summary and takeaways
In the grand scheme of things, there are no drastic differences in consumption habits between YouTube web and app users. However, when you dig a little deeper into the data, some variations can be observed. For example, the top videos in different categories.
The main observations from the data are:
- The top ten categories for both web and app were the same. There was slight variation with the order of popularity, though Entertainment was number 1 for both.
- There was significantly less overlap across devices for top channels and videos.
- Major events in the USA can often be seen reflected in YouTube activity.
- The main difference in times of day when Youtube was being watched is that the app saw more activity later into the night and early hours of the morning than on the web.
- Over the course of the week, app activity remained pretty constant, while web YouTube activity slowly declined over the week, with Saturday being the least busy day.
- More videos tended to be watched per day on the app than on the web.
- On both web and app, video duration between 3-4 minutes long was the most common, but significantly more on the YouTube app.
Disclaimer
The data displayed in this report has been provided by Datos, A Semrush Company, and MFour. The analysis is based on Datos’ & MFour’s US panel, representing a diverse and statistically significant sample of users, and covers the months of Jan – Dec 2024. For further information please visit Datos’s website and its Privacy Policy.
