Have you been spending inordinate amounts of time every day on video-sharing platforms, oftentimes completely losing track of time? Well, as it turns out, so has pretty much everyone, so don’t feel guilty. What makes the endless stream of entertaining clips available online so addictive, though?
To try to paint a clear picture of this matter for you, we’ve rounded up the latest social video statistics from Australia and beyond.
So let’s press play and get to the bottom of things!
Vital Social Video Stats to Bring You up to Speed
- 79.9% of the Australian population was active on SM in 2021.
- On average, Australians spend 1h 46m a day on social media.
- In 2019, Aussies spent 25 hours and 40 minutes per month watching online videos.
- The top social platform in Australia is FB, with 16.5 million unique monthly visitors.
- Australians aged 25-34 were the most active on social media apps in ‘19.
- 97.5% of Aussies check what’s new on social media on their mobile devices.
- In 2020-2021, 59% of adult Aussies watched digital video content on their smartphones.
- 60% of businesses used video in their marketing strategy in 2020.
- A video in a post increases traffic from search results by 157%.
- By the end of 2021, internet traffic from online videos in AU is expected to reach 79% of the total.
General Social Video Statistics in Australia
1. 79.9% of the Australian population was active on SM in 2021.
(Statista) (We Are Social)
Australian social media stats indicate that in 2015, just 58% of the people Down Under actively used social media. By 2021, however, the number of active SM users had increased by 21.9% compared to that year, reaching 20.5 million Aussies.
The average number of accounts per internet user aged 16-64 in January 2021 was 7.2, with 96.4% using a messaging service or social media platform in the month prior to the survey.
2. On average, Australians spend 1h 46m a day on social media.
(We Are Social)
According to new social media stats, in January 2021, Aussies spent an average of 106 minutes daily on SM. That’s a significant chunk of the time they were online overall—6 hours and 13 minutes.
Nevertheless, social media use came second to watching TV or streaming series and films, which Australians put twice as much time into or an average of 3.5 hours a day.
3. In March-May 2020, Aussies spent 6.2 hours a week on socials.
(Statista)
Before the Covid-19 pandemic started, the average amount of time Aussies over the age of 14 spent on social media per week was 4.9 hours. However, we find from new social media stats that during the lockdown from March to May, that increased by 1.3 hours before going back down to pre-restrictions levels.
Namely, Australians between the ages of 16 and 64 reported spending 12% more time on SM in March 2020, while also investing 4% more time into creating and posting videos on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, etc.
4. Australian social media stats show that 41% of users post photos or videos in a given month.
While social media is mainly used to send private messages in Oz, with 59% of adult users reporting using it for this purpose in 2020-2021, 56% also said that they’d liked other people’s posts. Further, 52% had commented on posts, and 42% had followed people in the four weeks leading up to the survey.
Therefore, posting pictures or clips was only the fifth most common SM activity among polled adult Aussies. However, as many as 68% of teens (aged 12-17) surveyed in September 2020 posted such media online.
5. In 2019, Aussies spent 25 hours and 40 minutes per month watching online videos.
(Mumbrella)
The average video time Australians spent absorbed in their devices in 2019 was over a full day a month, recording a 5% year over year increase among video-streaming adults.
Younger people even spent two full days a month (48 hours) doing so. What’s more, among seniors over the age of 65, the time spent on this activity expanded by 18% y-o-y.
6. In 2018, 71% of Aussie social media users used these platforms in the evening.
It seems that social networks are so addictive that they’re encroaching on people’s personal time and their work hours. As many as 57% of Australians got on social media apps as soon as they woke up in the morning in 2018, while it was the last thing 39% of them did before going to bed as well.
Further, 47% said they checked such sites on their breaks or at lunchtime, whereas 21% did so while at work. And not only that, but 33% of Aussie adults in a 2020 survey admitted to using employer-issued devices to check or post on their personal social media accounts. These patterns are worth-noting for marketers when considering the timing for social media posts.
Social Video Usage Overview
7. The top social platform in Australia is FB, with 16.5 million unique monthly visitors.
(Civic Web Media)
New social media stats from December 2020 tells us that right behind it is YouTube with 16 million unique monthly visitors, while Instagram is a distant third with over 9 million.
WhatsApp got 8 million such hits, putting this platform in fourth place, while LinkedIn was fifth with 6.5 million. Snapchat was a close sixth with 6.4 million, whereas Twitter was less popular, attracting just 5.8 million unique monthly visitors and thus ranking eighth.
8. In 2021, the average engagement rate on a FB social video post in Oz was 0.09%.
(Statista) (Social Media Today) (Talkwalker)
If you ask Aussies, Facebook tops the list of best social media apps. On average, in 2019, people around the world watched 8 billion FB clips a day, and its video platform was visited by 75 million users daily.
The global engagement rate on this social network in 2018 was highest when it came to videos—13.9%, while in Oz specifically—5.15%.
9. In 2018, 40% of IG users posted Stories daily.
(Social Media Perth) (Omnicore Agency)
According to the latest social video statistics, IG Stories have over half a billion daily users worldwide as of 2021, which, in turn, is about half of all the app’s monthly active users.
Videos posted on Instagram get more than double the engagement photos, while the IGTV app has 7 million installs globally.
10. Viewing statistics show that over 2 billion videos are watched on Twitter every day.
(Hootsuite) (Omnicore Agency) (Fiber) (Twitter Business) (Social Media Today)
Globally, Twitter had over 317 million monthly active users in 2019, of which 4.6 million were Australian. In just a year, between 2019 and 2020, total Twitter video watching recorded an increase of 62%, while by 2021, 93% of video views were mobile views.
Namely, 82% of Twitter users around the world mostly watch video content on the app. In a day, clips on this platform get over 2 billion views, and video tweets are six times more likely to be retweeted than photo ones are.
11. In the first half of ‘20, the number of TikTok users in AU increased by 52.4%.
(Roy Morgan) (Social Media Perth) (Oberlo)
TikTok is the hottest new social media platform right now, with at least 1 billion video views a day in 2021. It’s unsurprising, then, that in the first half of 2020 alone, the number of users in Oz jumped up by 850,000 people.
Of all 689 million active TikTok users worldwide, around 2.5 million reside Down Under. On average, an Aussie user spends as much as 26 minutes on it per session, while Android users in the country spend an average of 17 hours a month on the app.
12. There are 7.55 million monthly active Snapchat users in Oz.
(Social Media News) (Omnicore Agency)
When it comes to other social video sites, globally, there are 280 million daily Snapchat users in 2021. Of these, 4.5 million are Aussies who use this app every single day. Internationally, this platform logs as many as 18 billion video views per day.
13. LinkedIn had over 12,450,000 Australian users in August 2021.
(Social Media Today) (NapoleonCat) (Kinsta)
Now, according to video marketing statistics, LinkedIn has around 740 million users worldwide as of 2021, who are 20 times more likely to share a video on it than any other type of post. Specifically, 47.9% of Australia’s population had signed up for this professional networking platform by August 2021.
However, can social media videos be used for business successfully? Absolutely! Globally, more than 55 million companies are registered with this service. Moreover, 51% of video marketers on LI use this platform, and 84% of them feel that their online video marketing on it has been effective since such campaigns have impressive 82% view rates.
14. According to video statistics, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter are used more by Aussie men than women.
(L&A Social)
YT was more used by men than women (68% of the former compared to 62% of the latter) in 2020. Things were similar on LinkedIn, which was used by 22% of females and 34% of males, as well as Twitter since 19% of women and 29% of men were on it.
On Facebook, however, it was the other way around. 94% of females were on it vs 84% of males. Aussie women also led in terms of Instagram use—59% compared to just 39% of men. Snapchat, in turn, attracted just 29% of Australian women and 20% of men.
15. Australians aged 25-34 were the most active on social media apps in ‘19.
(Talkwalker)
Among the most active Aussies when it comes to SM in 2019 were young ones between the ages of 25 and 34, making up 43.8% of users. Behind them were 18-24-year-olds with 32.7%, while 35-44-year-olds were third with 12.5%.
Only 5.5% of youngsters aged 13-17 were active social media users, while 45-54-year-olds were likewise near the bottom with 4.3%.
16. YouTube is increasingly being used by seniors both in the USA and AU.
(Hootsuite) (Statista)
Social video user demographics show that 77% of Americans who are 15-35 years old use YT, but it’s almost as popular among those aged 36-45 (73%) and 46-55 (70%). Even 67% of US residents who are 56+ years old use it, in contrast to other social platforms, which see usage plummet as age climbs.
This trend is also visible Down Under, where in June 2020, 24% of internet users over the age of 65 reported watching online content on platforms such as YouTube, up from just 5% in 2017. In fact, 71% of Aussies in this age bracket said in a different survey that year that they’d used the internet to watch videos, another steep increase from the 43% in ‘17.
Consumers and Social Video Stats
17. 97.5% of Aussies check what’s new on social media on their mobile devices.
According to stats from 2021, almost all or 19.99 million Australian SM users access these platforms via their phones, with 88.2% of 16-64-year-olds in Oz having social networking apps installed on them. Furthermore, 68.3% of Aussies in this age range reported having entertainment and video applications on their mobile devices.
18. 35% of Aussies used tablets to access SM in 2018.
(AdNews) (Statista) (Brand Watch)
In 2018, 10% more Australian adults used tablets to check social media platforms compared to 2017, when just 25% of them did so. However, what percentage of video views on YouTube come from mobile devices? As the most visited video viewing site Down Under, YT was accessed from tablets and mobile phones 76% of the time in 2019.
Similarly, globally, around 70% of YT clips are watched on mobile. Moreover, as of 2020, the average YouTube watching session lasts over 40 minutes. It’s no surprise when there are 32.5 million mobile phone subscriptions in Australia.
19. In 2020-2021, 59% of adult Aussies watched digital video content on their smartphones.
Online video consumption statistics tell us that 56% of Ozzie adults viewed such digital content on smart TV sets. Less than half, or 48% did so on laptops, while exactly one-third (33%) used a tablet. Only 27% used a desktop computer, and even fewer or 21% a gaming console.
20. Children’s online videos are the most-watched ones in Australia.
(eDigital Agency)
Video statistics on YouTube show us that the Bounce Patrol channel with 24.2 million subscribers is the most popular in the country as of 2021. In second place is Chloe Ting with 21.7 million subs, whereas LazarBeam with 19.1 million comes in third. Fourth is CKN Toys with 17.4 million subscribers, while How to Basic with 16.7 million ranks fifth.
21. In March ‘19, LADbible was the top FB video publisher globally with 1.6 billion views.
Global social video statistics tell us that tied for second place with 1.5 billion views each were UNILAD and Viral TRND. Next was 5-Minute Crafts with 1.4 billion views, while Tasty trailed it distantly with 961 million. Daily Mail Australia came in tenth place in the world with 628 million Facebook video views.
Social Video as a Marketing Tool
22. Video length best practices suggest that the shorter the clip, the better.
(Sprout Social)
Video viewing statistics tell us that attention spans on social media are pretty short. Namely:
- People will only watch a full Facebook video if it’s up to 15 seconds long (the same goes for Twitter).
- However, if you’re looking to boost engagement on FB, opt for a clip duration of two to five minutes.
- The video length of Instagram Stories and Reels is capped at 15 seconds. ( Once the clip’s been added, you can speed it up.)
- It’s best that an IG Feed clip be 26 seconds long.
- If you want to increase brand awareness, LinkedIn videos that are 30 seconds long have a 200% higher completion rate.
- On Snapchat, it’s best to keep things as short as three to five seconds per clip.
- How long should a YouTube video be? It depends on its purpose, but ones with a runtime of over 10 minutes are increasingly common nowadays due to the creators’ ability to insert ads into them.
23. 60% of businesses used video in their marketing strategy in 2020.
(Biteable)
According to a 2020 survey of 694 marketers and small businesses that used video for marketing purposes, exactly half had been making clips for over a year, and 36% created them a few times a week, while 14% every day.
So, how effective is video content as a marketing tool? Taking into account that 94% of marketers who have used it for this purpose intend to continue to do so, we can say it’s pretty effective. Additionally, 61% of businesses said that videos were a vital part of their marketing strategy.
24. Why are video ads more effective?
(Social Media Today)
IG, YT or FB are the top three platforms on which consumers discover new stuff to buy. Namely, 40% of people purchased more products or services in 2021 than in 2020 after seeing ads about them on social media.
As many as 93% of shoppers found videos helpful when buying something. But how effective is video on social media? 71% of consumers decided to purchase a brand’s product or service after seeing one of its clips on SM. Furthermore, 74% of them reported engaging with advertisements on Instagram Stories.
25. A video in a post increases traffic from search results by 157%.
(Prosperity Media)
Since the overwhelming majority of online experiences (93%) begin with search engines, it’s far better to use videos in posts since it significantly boosts organic traffic from search results.
26. In 61% of cases, researching a product on social media apps leads to buying it.
(Hello Social) (Statista)
Up to 35% of Australian consumers in 2020 used SM sites to learn about a product or contact the company. Among those who were influenced by social media to purchase something, four in five bought it online. Before ordering from an online retailer, however, one-third of people checked out their SM channels.
This comes as no surprise since, in 2020/2021, as many as 44% of Aussies said that they’d found out about interesting new products from social media, while 33% did the same on video platforms like YT.
27. Is video more engaging than text or pictures?
It turns out that it is since 74% of marketers have noticed that video provides a better return on investment than pics. Here, YT comes out on top with the best such ROI, trailed by FB and IG.
Namely, 68% of marketers believe that clips are better in this regard than Google Ads, and as many as 30% think online videos are a more important part of their strategy than their websites.
Further, 53% use clips to raise awareness, 52% to build trust with prospective clients, while 49% deploy them as a means of audience engagement.
28. 51% of marketers host their clips on free video sharing platforms like YT.
Under one-quarter or 23% self-host them, whereas just 17% pay for the hosting of their videos. As many as three-quarters post them on Facebook, 70% on YouTube, and 58% on Instagram.
When it comes to the time of day when such videos are posted on social media, 34% of marketers do so in the afternoon, one-quarter in the evening, 22% in the morning, while just 2% at night.
Future Social Video Trends
29. YouTube reigns supreme among video sharing platforms.
(Practical Ecommerce) (Statista)
With over a billion hours of clips watched every day in 2019, YT is undoubtedly the preeminent video sharing site in the world. Predictions at the time suggested that in Australia alone, it’d reach 16.57 million users in 2021, amid a projected steady growth to 18.49 million by 2025.
Also, given that the weekly vlog reach in Q1 2021 among the continent’s netizens was 16%, one of the video marketing tips we can safely give you is to produce this type of content if you’re a marketer.
30. By the end of 2021, internet traffic from online videos in AU is expected to reach 79% of the total.
(Oberlo) (Cisco)
Internet video traffic in Australia is predicted to quadruple between 2016 and 2021 at a CAGR of 29% to a whopping 2.3 Exabytes per month. For context, by 2022, 82% of all consumer internet traffic worldwide is on track to come from video streaming and downloads, so it looks like Oz is keeping pace with the global video trends.
31. In 2021, 75.7% of all internet traffic Down Under will be long-form videos, live ones included.
(Cisco)
Live and long-form online videos are gaining traction in Australia. While in 2016, they made up 54.2% of all internet traffic, as of 2021, that’s set to increase by 21.5% to make up just over three-quarters of the total.
32. 86.2% of businesses intend to create interactive clips in the future due to consumer preferences.
(Spiel Creative)
As of 2021, 87.7% of polled businesses around the world have successfully incorporated interactive clips into their sales strategies. Namely, 75% of consumers preferred learning about new products from such videos rather than salespeople, which is why around five in six marketers intend to continue using them.
The bottom line is that this type of media can be used to create buzz around a product, increasing viewing time by 47% and purchaser intent ninefold, so don’t hesitate to invest in such advertising videos.
Before You Log Off
If you liked this video, make sure to like, share, and subscribe… Ahhh, we’re just toying with you! It’s become quite the familiar refrain, though, hasn’t it? Either way, as the social video statistics above have shown us, people wouldn’t be doing it if there weren’t such a market for it.
But what’s the harm in a bit of fun, and besides, social media is how humans connect nowadays. So perhaps it’s best to embrace the new trends and technologies—whether to reach a wider audience for our products or get a snippet of how others live in our downtime.
Whatever the case may be, we hope we’ve provided you with the insight you needed to gain an edge on this topic while keeping you entertained along the way.
- AdNews
- Biteable
- Brand Watch
- Cisco
- Civic Web Media
- eDigital Agency
- Fiber
- Hello Social
- Hootsuite
- Hootsuite
- Kinsta
- L&A Social
- Mumbrella
- NapoleonCat
- Oberlo
- Oberlo
- Omnicore Agency
- Omnicore Agency
- Omnicore Agency
- Practical Ecommerce
- Prosperity Media
- Roy Morgan
- Social Media News
- Social Media Perth
- Social Media Perth
- Social Media Today
- Social Media Today
- Spiel Creative
- Sprout Social
- Statista
- Statista
- Statista
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- Talkwalker
- Twitter Business
- We Are Social
