Lockdown period: Encouraging the masses to create video contents on YouTube

Since the beginning of the lockdown on March 22nd, there has been a huge surge in posting different video contents on some of the popular social media channels such as YouTube. YouTube is a primary video sharing platform that offers the public with the option to post some of the most influencing video contents on different topics such as health & wellness, technology, informative videos, and several others. In India due to the lockdown in response to COVID- 19 outbreak there has been reportedly a growth of 20.5 subscribers base in the country.

Most of the contents available on YouTube after the lockdown began were related to the COVID – 19 pandemics. Moreover, several business brands are even taking advantage of the current situation in order to hoard better consumer engagement as well. According to the latest report, in comparison to the statistics of the year 2019, it is found that has been a 13 per cent rise in user engagement. Even the video-sharing platform has taken initiatives due to the growing usage and has incorporated a number of tools such as Brand Lift measurement on the screens, flexible formats for the contents, and help advertisers with promotional postings.

Due to the initiatives taken by YouTube, the marketers are quite influenced and now can easily make informed decisions in terms of their ad performances and optimize the ad campaigns in real-time. The interesting part is that there is a huge surge in viewership because of more people opting for the platform in terms of entertainment, infotainment, and draw more information from the platform on how to maintain their lifestyle during this demanding and unprecedented situation. When talking about the content creators, they are getting hosts of opportunities for creating more influencing videos and share information among the masses.

In terms of format flexibility, YouTube has influenced more bloggers this year by introducing a skippable ad format for those contents to be cast on TV screens. This provides the advertisers with a whole new way to reach their target audiences by evolving the ways which the customers like the most on the platform. As per a market study, there has been a surge of 98 per cent view of COVID - 19 related videos with 19 per cent more engagement. After the initiation of worldwide Lockdown across many countries there has been a significant change in viewer behaviour with most of the viewership is observed from the age group of 18-34. The interesting fact is that most of these views on YouTube were found to be from mobile devices only. Moreover, YouTube has become the first choice for school students during the lockdown period and is serving as their learning stage. It has influenced many teachers and students by providing high-quality video content created by different educational institutions in different languages such as Hindi, English, Telugu, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, and all other Indian languages.