TikTok Overtakes Average Watch Time Per US YouTube User

ILLUSTRATION/UNSPLASH-Solen Feyyisa

JAKARTA - TikTok is currently the dominant application for social media, with users growing every day. TikTok managed to beat the average YouTube watch time in the United States (US) and the UK.

The report, released by analytics firm App Annie, thinks TikTok has improved streaming and the social landscape. Thus, TikTok ranks first in terms of app downloads worldwide in the first half of 2021.

The growth comes amid the ban on TikTok in the US during the Donald Trump administration, and India, which is the app's biggest market.

Quoted from The Verge, Wednesday, September 8, App Annie revealed that in the US the ByteDance-owned app first took over YouTube in August last year, and by June 2021 its users were watching more than 24 hours of content per month, compared to 22 hours and 40 minutes. on the Google video platform.

Whereas in England, the difference is even more stark. TikTok overtook YouTube in May last year and users there are now reportedly watching nearly 26 hours of content a month, compared to less than 16 hours on YouTube. However, this report is based on consumption of Android users only.

The short video app first surpassed YouTube in the UK in May 2020 and has continued to lead the way ever since. While in the US, TikTok and YouTube have been swapping top spots since August last year. But at the same time, YouTube has managed to maintain the overall dominance of watch time on Android devices globally.

No doubt because YouTube has two billion users compared to TikTok which is around 700 million. App Annie says YouTube continues to lead in streaming, social and photo and video because of its deeper and wider reach.

The streaming feature is one of the factors driving the growth in the average time spent on YouTube. In her report, App Annie also noted that TikTok's gain over YouTube could shake up the rankings in the years to come.

This is because people prefer to spend time watching short video content. Not giving up, YouTube is also trying to compete with TikTok through the Shorts feature, a short video feature that was launched in the last few months.