Due to COVID-19, 'YouTube's Dominance' Strengthened... 28.87 Million Unique Visitors in March

28.871 Million Unique Visitors in March, More Than Twice Instagram
Surge in Unique Visitors Due to COVID-19... YouTube's Growing Dominance in Korean OTT

[Asia Economy Reporter Koo Chae-eun] The number of users on the video service YouTube has surged explosively due to the impact of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). In March alone, 28.87 million people visited, overwhelmingly surpassing Instagram's visitors (11.058 million).

According to the media data clipping report released by Incross on the 30th, YouTube's unique visitors in March, when the spread of COVID-19 was prominent, reached 28.871 million, the highest among all websites and apps. The gap was also large compared to Naver Band (15.856 million) and Instagram (11.058 million) based on unique visitors.

Starting from March, when COVID-19 became full-scale, the average number of video platform launches, page views, and dwell time all increased. Dwell time also increased mainly on PC web pages; YouTube's PC web page dwell time in March was 124.3 minutes, up 19.1% compared to February. It surpassed the dwell time of other platforms. Twitter recorded a 28.8% increase to 60.9 minutes.

Even based on last year, YouTube's popularity is outstanding. Last year, YouTube's average monthly unique visitors was 26.728 million, the highest. It was followed by Naver Band (15.891 million), Facebook (9.337 million), Instagram (9.202 million), and Naver TV (2.264 million). The fastest-growing platform, Netflix, saw its unique visitors last year reach 1.738 million, a 292% increase compared to the previous year. TikTok also showed a high annual growth rate of 114.2%. The average number of video platform app launches was recorded in the order of Twitter (290.7 times), Facebook (131.2 times), and Instagram (123.0 times).

Lee Jae-won, CEO of Incross, said, "Recently, digital video consumption is mainly centered on YouTube," adding, "Various mobile-centered video platforms such as OTT and social media are also showing an upward trend together."