X

YouTube crosses 2 billion viewers a month

The world's biggest video site, which was at 1.8 billion viewers a year earlier, also has more hours streaming to TV sets than before.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials
  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
Joan E. Solsman
2014-youtube-logo-offices.jpg

The YouTube logo on display in the lobby of YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, Calif.

Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

YouTube has crossed into 2 billion logged-in viewers every month, a milestone that's been just out of reach for at least a year, CEO Susan Wojcicki said Thursday.

In February, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said YouTube was almost at 2 billion monthly logged-in users, after the company said it reached 1.8 billion monthly logged-in viewers a year ago. 

Wojcicki also said viewers spend 250 million hours watching YouTube on TV screens every day, up from 180 million hours in the middle of last year. 

YouTube made the announcements Thursday at a presentation to advertisers in New York known as Brandcast. It was the so-called Newfront this year, a four-day series of events thrown by digital media companies to drum up advertiser interest.     

For years, YouTube has grappled with balancing the "brand safety" expected by its advertisers versus the presumption of freedom of speech and creative license held by YouTube's uploaders. At the same time, YouTube has faced ongoing scrutiny that it fails to adequately rein in misinformation and shocking videos, like footage of a deadly New Zealand mosque shooting in March

Watch this: What's going on at Google?