YouTube has surpassed a significant milestone in the amount of video watched on its site each day. According to The Wall Street Journal, over 1 billion hours of video are watched every day on YouTube, after the implementation of user personalisation designed to keep people on the site for longer. eMarketer's principal video analyst, Paul Verna, said that new algorithms on the site that increase viewing time, as opposed to clicks, have “made the platform an increasingly effective advertising vehicle”. Verna added that this has meant that marketers are increasingly ready to spend more on YouTube advertising, allowing it “to capture a growing share of TV budgets”. eMarketer also predicted that around 95% of users of OTT services will use YouTube by the end of 2017, meaning that the site is now likely to look elsewhere to expand. Monica Peart from eMarketer said that “it remains to be seen whether brands will be attracted” to the site in future, as they are used to “telling their stories within premium content viewing environments”, such as television.Â
