News Category generated 18 Billion views on YouTube in 2017; India Today Group tops with 1.92 Billion views: Vidooly Report

Next 9 News is India’s most watched digital news channel on Youtube that does not have or operate a television channel.

New Delhi: India’s leading Video Intelligence platform, Vidooly has launched the Digital Video Report for News Category for the year 2017. According to the report 65 million Indians in 2017 watched news on Youtube generating 18 billion views and the India Today Group is India’s most viewed News network on YouTube with 1.92 billion views in 2017 alone.

Following close in the second spot is NEXT9 News with 1.89 billion views in 2017, Interestingly NEXT9 News does not own any News Channel and it’s a Digital only platform.

ABP News group ranks third with 1.32 billion views in 2017. India’s 80 top digital news networks had a lifetime subscriber base of 65 million viewers up until December 2017 who collectively generated 18 billion views.

TV9 Network stood at No. 4 with 980.07 Million views from 2.39 million subscribers and Telugu News Channel V6 News has emerged as the topper in Telugu language with Single channel that commanded 1. 50 Million Subscribers and 757.23 million views. It stood at No. 8 in overall ranking.

With a user base of over 400+ million in India, Youtube is the biggest platform for video content. Every day across Youtube, Vidooly tracks data from over 500 million videos globally. In order to prepare Vidooly’s Annual Digital Video report in News category, Vidooly tracked viewership data from over 80+ news networks in India who have a presence on Youtube. Additionally, Vidooly also tracked anonymous viewership habits of 400 million plus viewers between the ages of 18 – 65 on Youtube in 2017.

Subrat Kar, CEO and co-founder of Vidooly said“Our Annual Digital Video Report in News is an effort to examine the viewership growth pattern in the Indian media on Youtube. Interestingly we are witnessing not just new age media companies but also legacy media companies who are investing heavily in growing their digital presence. While monetisation still remains a challenge, the ubiquity and massive audience base of Youtube has led to news networks attracting the younger crowd who don’t watch news on television and prefer to consume content on online video platforms.” 

Top Trends observed in the Report:

• Regional news content in Hindi and Telugu dwarfs English news content in terms of views on Youtube. All the top 10 news networks on Youtube have a regional channel.

• News channels on Youtube get the most amount of views in the months of March, June, July, October and December.

• After Kids, Music and Entertainment content, News is the 4th most watched category on Youtube in India.

• Next 9 News is India’s most watched digital news channel on YouTube that does not have or operate a television channel.

• India’s 80 top digital news networks had a lifetime subscriber base of 65 million viewers up until December 2017.
• Indian news networks pulled in 18 billion views on Youtube in 2017

• Out of 18 billion views, digital only news properties contributed 22% ie 4 billion of the views in 2017.