In the January comScore survey of Internet video traffic, Google sites placed well ahead of every other company measured. Most of the traffic was to YouTube. The search engine’s video sites had traffic of 174 million unique visitors. Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) was a distant second with 84.2 million unique visitors. Experts question whether either business can be highly profitable long term.
The gulf between Facebook and the next group of sites was substantial. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) sites had unique visitors of 56.0 million for the month. Vimeo had 47.1 million, followed by CBS Corp.’s (NYSE: CBS) CBS Interactive at 45.6 million and Comcast Corp.’s (NASDAQ: CMCSA) NBC Universal at 45.1 million.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has started to break out YouTube’s numbers. Listed as “other revenue,” which was primarily results from the huge video property, revenue rose 24% to $2.1 billion.
YouTube faces hurdles that other large video sites do. First, the price that companies can get for video ads has fallen rapidly, and the industry has produced an oversupply. The second is that even large video sites like YouTube have had trouble getting paid subscriptions for video on demand, which has been dominated by Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).
YouTube may sit in first place among its peers in video traffic. That does not make it a good business.
Get Ready To Retire (Sponsored)
Start by taking a quick retirement quiz from SmartAsset that will match you with up to 3 financial advisors that serve your area and beyond in 5 minutes, or less.
Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests.
Here’s how it works:
1. Answer SmartAsset advisor match quiz
2. Review your pre-screened matches at your leisure. Check out the advisors’ profiles.
3. Speak with advisors at no cost to you. Have an introductory call on the phone or introduction in person and choose whom to work with in the future
Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.
Latest from 24/7
Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.
You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.