YouTube, which is putting on the best face it can during this week’s NewFronts, slipped in an amazing statistic during their announcement of Dreamworks’ acquisition of AwesomenessTV, a network that reaches 14 million subscribers over 55,000 YouTube channels.  Earthlings now watch YouTube to the tune of 6 billion hours a month.  That’s a 50 percent increase year-over-year.  And, they are citing a conclusion from Nielsen that YouTube reaches more people in the 18-34 demographic than any cable network.  That’s some kind of reach.

YouTube: 6 Billion Hours And Counting

As YouTube points out, 6 billion hours in a month is almost an hour for every person who lives on Earth.  Of course, it’s not nearly like that…it is a bunch of people, a little over a billion unique visitors, watching hours of content every month.  The figure was at 4 billion hours, and now it’s at 6 billion…a 50 percent increase.  That’s just mind-blowing.  But it also shows that YouTube has been hard at work finding people everywhere they go, increasing its reach in different countries (70 percent of its traffic comes outside the U.S.) and on almost every device you can think of.

I’m wondering if this time next year, we’ll be talking about 9 billion hours a month.  It was impressive when it was 4 billion.  Just imagine it being more than twice that next year.