Analysis of YouTube in the Social Media Industry

This report analyzes YouTube in the social media industry, including its growth, revenue, and different aspects in which the company excels and is criticized. Recommendations are provided to improve the company's weak points.

Running head: COMMUNICATION
Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1COMMUNICATION
Executive Summary
The report has helped in the entire analysis of the social media industry wherein YouTube
has been taken into consideration. This has been noticed that there are different kinds of
aspects in which the company has excelled and there are few aspects in which the company
failed and was criticized as well. The different aspects have been defined and analyzed along
with providing recommendations for the same. The different graphs and pie charts have been
provided which helped in dealing with the reports on the YouTube decline and growth in
terms of sales and revenue.

COMMUNICATION 2
Table of Contents
1. Introduction of the Social Media Industry 3
2. Overview of YouTube Company 3
2.1 One aspect of the Company Excels 6
2.2 Another Aspect of the Company Excels 6
2.3 One Aspect that the Company is Criticized 7
3. Conclusion and Recommendations 7
References 9

COMMUNICATION 3
1. Introduction of the Social Media Industry
According to Allcott and Gentzkow (2017), Social Media has become extremely
lucrative industry in the recent years and the revenue is increasing rapidly as well. Social
media is being referred as user created content which is published and shared online.
Furthermore, this is one of the online technologies which helps the users in sharing the
content and communicating with one another as well. Social media has changed the lives of
the individuals and there are people who use it for staying informed in a positive manner.
The main purpose of the assignment is to analyse the You Tube Company which is
the part of the social media industry (Youtube.com, 2018). The market intelligence reports
have presented growth prospects of the social networking site in which this was seen that
Facebook has 1.79 bn monthly users as of third quarter of 2016. The businesses in the present
scenario are using different networking sites such as You Tube and Facebook to exhibit their
products along with brands in an effective manner.
2. Overview of YouTube Company
YouTube is one of the American video sharing websites which is being headquartered
in San Bruno, California. The website was launched in the year 2005 in the month of
February. The YouTube website has earned advertising revenues from Google AdSense
which is a program that was launched according to the site content and audience.
YouTube is the video sharing website which allows the different individuals in
uploading and sharing various kinds of videos and the videos can be rated with dislike or like
and there are different options for subscription as well (Youtube.com, 2018). YouTube is the
video platform for the different individuals which is making it easier for the different creators
to share the unique content with large viewing audience in the entire market.

COMMUNICATION 4
Figure 1: Monthly User Rate of YouTube
(Source: Mathur, Narayanan and Chetty, 2018)
From the above figure, this can be analysed that YouTube is the second most used
application by the customers in the entire market. Till the year 2017, this has been noticed
that there are 1.5B monthly users in the market and this has helped in increasing the overall
growth of the company in an efficient manner.
Figure 2: Growth of Revenues
(Source: Digital Doughtnut, 2018)

COMMUNICATION 5
From the above figure, this has been noticed that there is huge growth in the revenue
of the company and the growth has been gradually increased to a huge extent in the entire
market as well. It was found that more than 90 percentage of the population in USA had used
the YouTube videos once for listening to music. On the other hand, more than half of the
population who are the mobile users in the world claimed to watch the different videos on
YouTube on a daily basis or several times in a single day (Digital Doughtnut, 2018).
Figure 3: Growth of YouTube and Competitors
(Source: Reino and Hay, 2016)
From the above figure, this can be analysed and identified that YouTube has taken
more than 38% share in the competitive market in comparison to the other competitors such
as Foxnews and CNN. Furthermore, this has been noticed that in the year 2016-2017,
YouTube tried to incorporate various ideas such as implementing the different kinds of data
analytics which helped the company to grow in comparison to the other competitors and this
was a successful attempt made by YouTube (Reino and Hay, 2016). This was seen that
YouTube has grabbed more than 84% of the market share in comparison to other competitors
such as Google Video and Metacafe.

COMMUNICATION 6
Figure 4: Hours Spent on YouTube
(Source: Thomas et al., 2015)
From the above figure, this can be seen that the number of viewers of YouTube has
increased to a huge extent and this has helped the company in analysing the different decline
in the revenue and sales. Furthermore, this was seen that the number of hours has been
increased to a huge extent by the customers in January 2017 wherein most of the young
generation individuals focused mainly on watching different videos on sports or other
activities as well (Brooks, 2017).
2.1 One aspect of the Company Excels
Firstly, this has been seen that YouTube has robust content ID system which helps in
preventing the different fraudulent copies of the videos (Lenhart et al., 2015). The different
copyright owners can use the system in an easy manner which will help in identification and
managing the content on site. The audio and video are being scanned against the database and
there is content ID which is being generated when there is a match. YouTube is the most
prevalent site in which there is inclusion of robust Content ID system and the system helps in
taking place in an automatic manner (Perrin, 2015).
2.2 Another Aspect of the Company Excels
The other aspect in which YouTube excels at is the website has fantastic kind of
analytics of data and the website has been honing and improving the analytics for years and
this makes it easier for the audience in receiving an overall overview of what is happening
and taking place in the video. Knowing the entire metrics of the advertisements or the videos
which can help in substantially improve the overall exposure and future content in the
platform will be secured as well (Duggan et al., 2015).

COMMUNICATION 7
From the above two aspects, this is clear that YouTube is still the king in the social
media platform and this is mainly due to the backbone of the system which have worked in a
proper manner to the success of the site effectually. The data analytics has helped YouTube
in performing in an effective manner which helps in the growth of the firm and this is the
most watched and used websites in the entire social media networking website platform.
2.3 One Aspect that the Company is Criticized
However, on the other hand, YouTube is being criticized for over the last few years is
that the contents do not appear when the phone screen is locked. Furthermore, this has been
noticed that there is too much of self-promotion and this has turned off lots of viewers in the
market. In the past scenario, this has been identified that there are various several minutes of
video which have been designed by them to self-promote themselves to a point in which this
becomes obnoxious in nature (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017). In the year 2017, this has been
noticed that the self-promotional activities of YouTube are becoming spam and this is
affecting the overall brand image of the company in the entire social media platform.
3. Conclusion and Recommendations
Therefore, this can be concluded that YouTube is the website which was examined in
the report which is one of the internationally successful company and this is still the king in
the social media platform as well. The growth of the company has been huge till the year
2017, however there was a huge decline in the growth of YouTube from the end of 2017
wherein this was noticed that the respective website has indulged into different kinds of
promotional activities which was for self-promotion and this has affected the entire brand
image of the company in a negative manner as well. Moreover, this has been noticed that
there are various contents which has been fostered to use violence to young generation or to
the entire country as well.
From the above, there are different kinds of recommendations which can be provided
in order to improve the correct the weak points of the company positively. The
recommendations are as follows:
● YouTube needs to analyse and create a content cadence as consistency is the hardest
part as this will help the website in knowing the needs of the audience and solve the
issues in an effective manner

COMMUNICATION 8
● Secondly, YouTube needs to improve the practices related to customer relationship
marketing and management which will improve the customer base and increase the
overall revenue and growth of the company in a positive manner
● Thirdly, YouTube is required to adopt the strategic practices which is related to
transparency of the different aspects which are being portrayed in the company as this
will improve the overall growth of the company
● Lastly, YouTube needs to collaborate in an effective manner which will help in
making the content disseminated and this has helped in informing the different
audiences as this will improve the overall viewership.

COMMUNICATION 9
References
Allcott, H. and Gentzkow, M., 2017. Social media and fake news in the 2016
election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), pp.211-36.
Brooks, R., 2017. Youtube Marketing: A Quickstudy Laminated Reference Guide.
Digital Doughtnut. 2018. Infographic: The Power of YouTube’s Influencers and the
YouTube Growth Tactics They Use. [online] Available at:
https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2017/december/power-of-youtube-influencers-and-
growth-tactics [Accessed 8 Sep. 2018].
Duggan, M., Ellison, N.B., Lampe, C., Lenhart, A. and Madden, M., 2015. Social media
update 2014. Pew research center, 9.
Lenhart, A., Duggan, M., Perrin, A., Stepler, R., Rainie, H. and Parker, K., 2015. Teens,
social media & technology overview 2015 (pp. 04-09). Pew Research Center [Internet &
American Life Project].
Mathur, A., Narayanan, A. and Chetty, M., 2018. Endorsements on Social Media: An
Empirical Study of Affiliate Marketing Disclosures on YouTube and Pinterest. arXiv preprint
arXiv:1809.00620.
Perrin, A., 2015. Social media usage. Pew research center, pp.52-68.
Reino, D. and Hay, B., 2016. The use of YouTube as a tourism marketing tool.
Thomas, S.L., Bestman, A., Pitt, H., Deans, E., Randle, M.J., Stoneham, M. and Daube, M.,
2015. The marketing of wagering on social media: an analysis of promotional content on
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Youtube.com. 2018. YouTube. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ [Accessed 8
Sep. 2018].