UPDATED February 21, 2019 — Livestreaming has been advancing quickly as social media platforms are scrambling to join the race. Beyond the basic livestreaming capability, platforms are now looking towards new features that enhance the livestreaming experience for content creators and for viewers. The newest features look to strengthen influencer-audience connections and differ across platforms.
Livestreaming, it seems, is everywhere. Recently LinkedIn announced LinkedIn Live, bringing high-quality livestreaming to the professional market. Most major social networking apps have been offering livestreaming options for years, from Facebook Live to Twitter’s Periscope and from Instagram Stories to Instagram Live. Influencers, celebrities, brands, publishers, and average users with modest followings are broadcasting events, concerts, protests, how-tos, and Q&As.
But with the boom in livestreaming platforms, formats, features, and content, it can be difficult to work out exactly how big livestreaming is, where it’s coming from, who’s streaming, who’s watching, and why it matters to advertisers and consumers alike. So we dug into the numbers to get a better idea of what the livestreaming landscape looks like. Here’s what we found.
The top livestreaming statistics shaping the world of online media:
The streaming industry is huge, but it’s poised to get even bigger. According to findings from Grand View Research, the video streaming market is on track to become a $124.6 billion industry by 2025. To provide perspective, In 2016, video streaming was a $30.29 billion industry, meaning that the growth in the next few years is going to be astronomical.
Marketers are continuing to explore live video as a fundamental form of media in campaigns. 35% of marketers now use live video compared to 28% last year. In the same study, 63% of marketers revealed they plan on increasing their use of live video in future campaigns.
YouTube has long been the video streaming giant of the internet. It stands to reason that YouTube live would be the giant of livestreaming. YouTube is currently the leader in both the overall streaming market as well as the market for online video. YouTube takes a strong lead against Netflix and Hulu in the streaming segment, while it faces slightly closer competition from Facebook in the U.S. online video market.
As for livestreaming, Statista’s study shows that YouTube’s dominance might’ve fallen a bit to Facebook in late 2016. In June 2016, 21% of respondents to Statistic’s study watched livestreamed video on YouTube, but that number fell to 16% in November. On the other hand, only 14% of respondents had watched live video on Facebook in June 2016, but by November, that number grew to 17%.
Rising livestreaming app Twitch is vying to be the most well-liked livestreaming platform for aspiring influencers. With twitch creators posting over 200,000 hours of content every day, non-gaming brands are taking notice as well.
According to a survey by Interactive Advertising Bureau, roughly 52% of live streaming video viewers worldwide are watching content on social platforms compared to a streaming service, TV network site/app, or TV service.
Online video is growing across the board, and live video is no exception. In Q3 of 2018, ad views on live video streaming grew 56%, which presents huge opportunities for advertisers. For context, ad view growth YoY for long-form and short-form videos (as compared to live videos) were 27% and -20% respectively.
The audience in a Livestream.com survey largely indicated they would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog post. In the same survey, 87% revealed they would watch content online if it meant more behind-the-scenes content than a standard TV broadcast.
Live video is great for engagement. Since launching, Facebook Live broadcasts have proven to increase engagement more than traditional videos by more than 6x. The live video format is being used by more content creators as well. Now, 1 in every 5 Facebook videos will likely be a Live broadcast.
It may not be a livestreaming behemoth, but Twitch is a massive force within the gaming community. With 15 million users streaming content every day, Twitch has a massive streaming ecosystem, and it doesn’t have a “built-in” audience the way Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter do. An average viewer will watch approximately 95 minutes per day. At peak time, there are over 2 million viewers on the site.
Twitch’s talent community is huge, too, with over 2.2 million unique streamers broadcasting each month and over 2.2 thousand are recognized by the platform as Twitch Partners, which translates to top livestreaming gamers.