YouTube counts 2.7B active users as it turns 19

By Tolga Yanik

ISTANBUL (AA) – YouTube, the world’s biggest video-sharing platform with over 2 billion active users, turned 19 this month.

Founded on Feb. 14, 2005 by three entrepreneurs, it was acquired by the technology giant Google for $1.65 billion slightly over a year and a half after its inception.

Serving as a staple in the Google ecosystem since 2006, the platform boasts 2.7 billion active users as of 2024, which is expected to reach 2.85 billion in 2025, according to data compiled by Anadolu.

A little more than half of netizens worldwide visit YouTube at least once a month, with the platform registering around 113 billion monthly visits.

Its ad-free version, YouTube Premium, and its sidekick YouTube Music recently hit 100 million users worldwide.

YouTube generates around $30 billion in annual ad revenue, which makes up its main source of income.

India ranked first on the list of countries with the most YouTube users as of January this year with 462 million, followed by the US with 239 million.

Türkiye meanwhile ranks 11th with 57.5 million active users.

Roughly 46.1% of the platform’s users are women and 53.9% men, and with a total of 720,000 hours of videos uploaded daily to the platform, the largest age group using YouTube is between 15 and 45.

Users watch over a billion hours of video per day.

- ⁠MrBeast becomes highest-earning content creator

The video-sharing platform is deemed an important source of income for content creators, also called YouTubers, who may be a person, group of people, or even a corporation.

US-based YouTuber MrBeast, a content creator working with a group of people to create challenges involving thousands of dollars, currently ranks first on the list of highest generated revenue on the platform, earning around $54 million per year according to 2022 data.

He is followed by Jake Paul, another US-based vlogger, with $45 million, Markiplier, a video game reviewer and actor on the platform, with $38 million, Rhett and Link, an entertainer duo, with $30 million, and Unspeakable, a creator who does challenges for his audience, with $28.5 million.

*Writing and contributions by Emir Yildirim