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What are the most popular content categories on YouTube and Instagram, and how big are they in terms of viewers.
According to a survey quoted in Statista, the most watched categories on YouTube are Music (72%), Entertainment (64%), and Educational/Instructional (37%). On the other hand, a study from Socialbakers found Instagram's most popular categories, in terms of interactions, are Fashion (38%), Beauty (21%) and Auto (11%). Meanwhile, image posts generate more interactions than video posts. This is true for all users with between 1 to more than 10 million followers on this social network. With this data, it is possible to calculate the total number of users and report the average interactions in each of the media platforms.
MOST POPULAR CONTENT ON YOUTUBE
The latest official YouTube statistics were made public during Vidcon, where YouTube announced they had around 1.5 billion active users worldwide. According to Statista, the United States has around 180.7 million YouTube users. This means 36% of U.S. internet users are active YouTube viewers. An online survey found the most popular video categories on YouTube are Music (72%), Entertainment (64%), and Educational/Instructional (37%), News (26%) and Content from Family and Friends (20%). These numbers match the most popular video categories in all online platforms, which are reported to be Comedy (47%), Music (44%), How-to (37%), News (20%), and Sports (20%).
Considering the data above, it is possible to estimate the total number of users of each category by multiplying the percentage of each category and the total number of U.S. YouTube users. The results, ordered by popularity, are listed below.
MOST POPULAR CONTENT ON INSTAGRAM
Unlike YouTube content categories, Instagram content is harder to classify. Instagram posts include user-generated content as well as branded content and advertisements. They can be classified by type of user, type of photos, hashtags, or industry. These can also be quantified by different measures, for example, number of subscribers, number of likes, etc. However, the most popular posts are not often similar in their content and are usually posted by celebrities or influencers with more followers. Also, users with more followers can upload a variety of content (brands, for example, may upload photos of products, stories of consumers, or regular ads). Because of this, it is more useful to use the number of interactions, that is the amount of likes, comments, and shares a post obtains for measuring popularity. Considering all the mentioned issues, there are a variety statistics that can prove valuable to understand the most popular content.
When analyzing by type of post (photograph vs. video), data from Statista shows image posts tend to generate more interactions than video posts. This is especially true for users with over 10 million subscribers. Users with this many subscribers obtain an average of over 207k interactions with each video post, but more than 385k interactions with each image post. The average difference in engagement between the types of posts decreases as the number of subscribers is also reduced. Here, it is important to note that the overall number of average interactions considerably decreases for users with less than 10 million subscribers. So users with 1 to 10 million followers obtain, on average, around 10k more interactions from their image posts than from their video posts. However, the average range of interactions for both posts is lower than 40k interactions per post.
Another way to measure popularity on Instagram is to use the industries that generate the most engagement. According to Socialbakers, some industries are more popular than others on Instagram in terms of the number of interactions they generate. According to their infographic, out of all interactions on Instagram, 38% refer to Fashion, 21% to Beauty, 11% to Auto, 8% to eCommerce, and 6% to Retail.
The information above shows Instagram's image posts, on average, generate considerably more interactions than video posts, especially in accounts with more than 10 million followers, where each image post obtains an average of over 385k interactions. Additionally, posts relating to Fashion generate most of the total number of interactions, while Beauty and Auto round up the top 3.
CONCLUSION
Information from Statista (also available in a Google Doc) made it possible to estimate the most popular video categories in YouTube and the number of users watching each category. The three most popular are Music, with 130 million users, Entertainment, with 115 million users, and Educational, with 66 million users. Instagram's most popular content by category is harder to classify, however, there is evidence that image posts generate more interactions than video posts, reaching an average of 385k interactions per post for users with over 10 million followers. Overall, the industry that generates the most interactions is Fashion, followed by Beauty and Auto.