During a 2025 survey among marketers worldwide, approximately ** percent reported plans to increase their use of YouTube for video marketing purposes in the near future. Similarly, ** percent said they would use Instagram more for that purpose. According to the same study, increased exposure and traffic were the leading benefits of social media marketing worldwide.

****** was the most used social media platforms to watch short-form videos among U.S. users, with approximately ** percent of respondents reporting to use the popular Chinese-developed social media as their preferred platform. ************** ranked second, with ** percent of respondents, while *************** ranked third. ******** ********* only gained the attention of approximately ***** percent of respondents.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, TikTok generated around 186 million downloads from users worldwide. Initially launched in China first by ByteDance as Douyin, the short-video format was popularized by TikTok and took over the global social media environment in 2020. In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok downloads peaked at over 313.5 million worldwide, up by 62.3 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019.

              TikTok interactions: is there a magic formula for content success?

              In 2024, TikTok registered an engagement rate of approximately 4.64 percent on video content hosted on its platform. During the same examined year, the social video app recorded over 1,100 interactions on average. These interactions were primarily composed of likes, while only recording less than 20 comments per piece of content on average in 2024.
              The platform has been actively monitoring the issue of fake interactions, as it removed around 236 million fake likes during the first quarter of 2024. Though there is no secret formula to get the maximum of these metrics, recommended video length can possibly contribute to the success of content on TikTok.
              It was recommended that tiny TikTok accounts with up to 500 followers post videos that are around 2.6 minutes long as of the first quarter of 2024. While, the ideal video duration for huge TikTok accounts with over 50,000 followers was 7.28 minutes. The average length of TikTok videos posted by the creators in 2024 was around 43 seconds.

              What’s trending on TikTok Shop?

              Since its launch in September 2023, TikTok Shop has become one of the most popular online shopping platforms, offering consumers a wide variety of products. In 2023, TikTok shops featuring beauty and personal care items sold over 370 million products worldwide.
              TikTok shops featuring womenswear and underwear, as well as food and beverages, followed with 285 and 138 million products sold, respectively. Similarly, in the United States market, health and beauty products were the most-selling items,
              accounting for 85 percent of sales made via the TikTok Shop feature during the first month of its launch. In 2023, Indonesia was the market with the largest number of TikTok Shops, hosting over 20 percent of all TikTok Shops. Thailand and Vietnam followed with 18.29 and 17.54 percent of the total shops listed on the famous short video platform, respectively.

In 2023, over 56 percent of the time spent on social media platforms for users in the United States was spent on social video activities. This represents an increase from the previous year, when the time spent engaging with social video among U.S. users was of around 53.3 percent, compared to 46.7 percent of the total social media time spent on other social network activities.

In 2024, YouTube counted approximately ** million monthly users aged between 35 and 54 in the United States. In comparison, U.S. viewers younger than ** amounted to around ** million. Meanwhile, TikTok's main audience was aged between 18 and 34 years, as approximately ** million users of that age visited the platform monthly. Facebook was particularly popular among users aged 35 and older, while less than ** million users younger than ** engaged with the platform on a monthly basis.

In 2024, YouTube was the most popular social video platforms for users in the United States, with an estimated viewership of *** million viewers. Facebook ranked second, while Instagram had approximately *** million users engaging with the platform's Reels and posts on a monthly basis. TikTok was estimated to have a monthly audience of *** million users in the examined period.

According to a survey of internet users in the United States, as of November 2021, ******* was the preferred social media platform to watch short-form videos, with around ** percent of respondents reporting to use the popular video platform to watch this type of content. ******** followed, with more than *** in ** respondents indicating they watch short-form videos on the platform. TikTok, which introduced only in February 2022 the possibility for users to upload videos up to ** minutes long, was indicated by ** percent of respondents as their preferred platform to watch short-form video content.

According to a survey on the most-viewed content formats on social media conducted in Indonesia in June 2023, approximately ** percent of Indonesian respondents stated that they enjoyed watching TikTok videos. Meanwhile, ** percent of them stated that they enjoyed watching Instagram posts.   Exploring video content trends and advertising impact in Indonesia  From music to video tutorials, videos have become the most popular visual medium on the internet. In 2023, almost every Indonesian watched online videos weekly. Video advertising, whether from trusted brands or influencers, has also increased in recent years and caught consumers’ attention. A recent study revealed that the most influential advertisements for Indonesians were those made by well-known brands compared to influencers. In addition, Indonesian consumers will be more likely to click on ads on social media when the content is relevant to them. The changing face of social media: Trends in Indonesia's online landscape From the era of Vine to the rise of TikTok, short video memes became the core of social media content. These memes have since been adopted by other popular social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. As of 2023, it is estimated that more than *** million people are TikTok users in Indonesia. However, TikTok’s dominance does not overshadow the significance of Facebook. Although Facebook users are gradually declining in Indonesia, it still has the largest market share among social media platforms, especially on mobile phones and tablets.

According to a survey of global social media users conducted in August 2021, ************ were more popular among users aged between 16 and 38 years, with approximately ** percent of respondents reporting to watch videos with a duration of less than four minutes. The popularity of online social videos ********* among Baby boomers, with ** percent of respondents in this age demographics reporting to watch short videos, while only ** percent reported watching long videos on social media.

As of July 2023, short videos were the most favourite social media activity among Generation Z adults in the United States, as more than 60 percent of respondents reported to have watched them. Conversely, approximately 43 percent of Gen Z adults watched livestream videos. Internet users in the United States liked to watch short videos on different platforms, but TikTok was the most popular.

Video has become one of the most popular online formats, spanning from educational content to product reviews. As of the second quarter of 2025, music videos recorded the highest category reach, with almost half of internet users worldwide reporting to watch music videos online each week. Social video engagement In recent years, YouTube and TikTok have become two of the most important social media platforms for global users, as video content commands high levels of engagement. In 2024, users worldwide spent approximately 28.4 hours using the YouTube mobile app per month. Additionally, the leading hashtags used by content creators on TikTok have amassed billions of views: as of October 2025, the TikTok hashtags “fyp” or “for you page” had reached 55 and 35 billion post views, respectively. Watching content: what device do users prefer? In 2024, televisions were the most used devices for global viewers to watch video-on-demand (VOD), with 58 percent of respondents reporting using these devices. In comparison, 12 percent of respondents reported using smartphones. Age group and generation are factors impacting viewership habits and device preferences, as younger users appear to prefer using their smartphones to consume content. According to a March 2024 survey, U.S. users aged 18-34 years were more likely to watch video content on smartphones than on any other devices. By comparison, connected TVs were particularly popular for the online video audience aged 35 and older.

Over ** percent of community managers in France used Instagram as their preferred social media network for publishing video content, according to the survey conducted in 2023. Facebook appeared as the second favorite go-to video publishing platform, chosen by ** percent of respondents. YouTube and LinkedIn followed with respectively ** percent and **** percent of community managers reporting to have used the networks for posting videos.

As of September 2023, YouTube as the most popular social media platform for global users, with 97 percent of respondents reporting to use the popular video platform. YouTube was also the most popular social media among Gen Z users, with 96 percent of respondents in this age group reporting to have used the video platform as of the examined period. Facebook's usage kept steady among among the general digital population, with around eight in 10 reporting to have used the platform. In comparison, the social media's popularity was in free fall among gen Z users with only four in 10 among those surveyed reporting to engage with the Meta-powered platform.

As of May 2024, YouTube was the most popular digital platform among Gen Z internet users in the United States. Around nine in 10 respondents reported accessing the platform. Instagram ranked second, as 73 percent of respondents stated to have engaged with the platform. Messaging platform WhatsApp was the least used digital platform, as only around 25 percent of consumers engaged with it as of the examined period.

During a 2025 survey among marketers worldwide, around 83 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 78 and 69 percent of the respondents. The global social media marketing segment According to the same study, 60 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2025. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide. Social media for B2B marketing Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram, both run by Meta, Inc., due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.

According to a survey of French consumers conducted in 2023, the number of respondents using social media and social video platforms daily correspondents to approximately ** percent of the French digital population. Of these, ** percent of respondents reported using platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram multiple times per day, while around ** percent reported using them every day or almost every day.

With approximately 1.6 billion video views in March 2019, LADbible was ranked first among the most watched Facebook video publishers. Second-ranked UNILAD generated 1.6 billion video views. Both social news and entertainment publishers are owned by the British media company The LADbible Group Ltd.

Social video consumption Watching a video on the likes of Facebook or Instagram is now part of everyday social media usage. Whilst YouTube is as popular as ever, it is no longer the only source out there for online video viewers. With companies and influencers utilizing video for marketing purposes on Instagram, concertgoers broadcasting the event to their friends via Facebook Live and Twitter users endlessly retweeting their favorite vlogs, video content on social is here to stay. Social media is an important channel for video producers and many traditional media brands have started to generate content specifically to be distributed and discussed on social platforms. News, ads, viral moments, celebrity vlogs, sporting clips – the variety of video clips on social media is seemingly endless and users are highly engaged with video content on Facebook. As of February 2018, Facebook ranked first among social video platforms, accounting for a significant share of social media video posts across all tiers of influencers. The network accounted for 50 percent of social video posts by celebrity influencers with more than 20 million followers.

Mobile social video
A significant chunk of social video is consumed via mobile. One of the most popular mobile video apps is TikTok, which has over 3.7 million monthly active users in the United States. TikTok is a mobile app for creating and sharing short videos, which also can be edited in-app. The app merged with Musical.ly in August 2018, thus gaining access to the teenage online user market in the United States. Popular types of TikTok videos include dances, comedy sketches or lip-synchs to songs. The platform is frequently considered the spiritual successor to the now-defunct mobile video app Vine, and popular TikTok videos are frequently shared across other social networks.

According to a survey conducted in June 2023, adults in the United States spent more time per day on TikTok than on any other leading social media platform. Overall, respondents reported spending an average of 53.8 minutes per day on the social video app. YouTube and Twitter ranked second and third, each with an average of 48 minutes and 34 minutes spent on the platforms per day, respectively.

U.S. teens have time for certain platforms

Different social media platforms attract different demographics, with teenagers in the United States being more drawn to TikTok and YouTube over Facebook. In 2023, teenagers in the United States spent an average of almost two hours on YouTube and 1.5 hours on TikTok every day, 1451257 while Facebook was used by teens for less than half an hour per day. Furthermore, social media habits differ between genders, as teen girls were more likely to spend more time than boys on Instagram.

TikTok is king for teens and Gen Z

Although spending 1.5 hours on the Generation Z app of choice may sound rather modest, some TikTok users devote much more of their time to the platform . According to a survey conducted in the United States in 2022, around eight percent of teenagers in the United States spent over five hours a day on TikTok. 1417187 whereas another 22 percent reported spending between two and three hours daily on the video-based app.

It was found that adults in the United Kingdom engage with social media equally as much as with video streaming platforms. For example as of May 2023, UK TikTok users spent ** minutes per day with the social network while Netflix users in the country also spent the same amount of time using the video streaming service daily. Video viewing - ad-supported options are driving consumption Since 2021, the reach of video-on-demand subscriptions in the United Kingdom has been oscillating around ** million households. The viewership boom that started during the coronavirus outbreak has now transitioned into steady audience numbers. Video streaming in the UK remains strong, however, the market is pivoting from premium models to free ad-supported ones such as broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD). The data shows that the viewership of BVOD services surpassed the SVOD viewer-base. Among many BVOD platforms, BBC iPlayer is by far the most popular ad-supported service in the UK, followed by ITV and All 4, showing the prevalence of local players. However, international services, such as Pluto TV, are slowly entering the market as well. In fact, while Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are losing viewer interest, Pluto TV is one of the platforms that experienced an increase in total content viewing hours between 2022 and 2023, indicating its growth potential.

This statistic presents the average length of YouTube videos as of December 2018, sorted by category. According to the report, the average video length is at 11.7 minutes. Music content generally had the shortest video length among all categories on the platform, with an average length of 6.8 minutes per video.