YouTube!

 One of the biggest apps in our generation that I personally believe is YouTube. For me personally, YouTube has helped me grow in every way in all of the sports that I have played in my life. YouTube has taught me most of what I have learned within disc golf and how to throw a disc, approach the game in every way possible, and many more. But, YouTube is actually really important when it comes to marketing. 

Some statistics that I found in the textbook was that there are two billion people that log into YouTube each month, which is just a crazy number to me. The total number of hours of video that is watched on YouTube each day is one billion hours, which again is just a crazy number. As of 2023, the Baby Shark video that everyone loved had over 12.3 billion views, which is making it the single most popular video that is on the platform. 

One of the most important things that people don’t really understand when it comes to YouTube and any other social media site is that there is an algorithm that people need to follow to allow them to grow the brand that they have. The algorithm uses data such as video relevance, video quality, watch time, number of video likes and dislikes, and more to determine which videos show up higher in search results and recommendations. There are three different things that are responsible for making some videos blow up and some that do not. One of them is personalization, which is the users watch history and action, the second is performance, which is the interest in watching the video, view duration, and satisfaction, the last thing is any external factors that may play a role in this such as topical interests, how competition is performing, and relevancy to the current season. There are five main sections where the YouTube algorithm has an impact. This includes the home page which is the first place that someone would land on. The suggested videos would be next, followed by the search bar. Right after that would include the trending tab which compiles the most popular videos and creators of the moment. The last and final section is the subscribers and subscriptions section. 

Even though a lot of us use YouTube just to watch videos, it is very apparent that YouTube can be used as a marketing tool that we all should look into.