YouTube most visitors; Facebook most members
March 16, 2016
A GWI Social report looks at the ongoing battle between Facebook and YouTube.
Facebook remains top of the pile on traditional metrics such as membership and active usage, whereas YouTube takes the lead for visitation (those who have visited the site/app in any form during the last month).
Given that people just need to visit either service in order to be served ads, it’s arguably the visitation metric which is the most important. That’s good news for YouTube, which leads Facebook in 21 of the 33 markets tracked in the report. It’s a similar story by age, with YouTube ahead in every bracket.
Crucially, though, large numbers of those visiting YouTube are either logged-out from their account or don’t have a membership at all. In contrast, Facebook can draw on the rich behavioural and demographic information it has about all of its logged-in visitors to target them with ads which are as relevant as possible. So, while YouTube might be ahead, it’s little wonder that Facebook is making so much noise about how many of its logged-in users are now watching videos inside the service.