Bloomberg Línea — YouTube no longer represents ‘the economy of the future,’ but has become a platform that contributes to the Brazilian economy and labor market, according to a study by UK-based consultancy Oxford Economics and published on Wednesday.
According to the report YouTube’s Economic Impact 2021, commissioned by Google (GOOG), the video platform generated 160,000 “equivalent jobs” last year.
This means that such people devoted weekly hours corresponding to a full-time job to producing videos on YouTube, either as ‘youtubers’ or as members of production and support teams.
The survey also pointed out that there were 2,000 channels on the platform that had more than one million subscribers in December 2021, a 20% increase compared over the December 2020 figure.
There was also growth among channels with more than 200,000 subscribers, with 20,000 in December 2021, 25% more than a year earlier, according to the report.
The survey heard from 7,000 people, among creators and users of YouTube, and interviewed experts “to gain insights into how the platform is contributing to Brazilian society and culture”.
The result, says the consultancy, is that YouTube contributed 6 billion reais ($1.14 billion) to Brazil’s GDP in 2021.
The study explains that this amount encompasses both the revenue earned by the channels directly, as well as the indirect impact on the channels’ related businesses and the YouTube content creators’ external revenues, such as brands that hire Youtubers instead of buying space on Google’s platform.
The study also found that 78% of small and medium-sized businesses that use YouTube agreed that the platform helped their business during the pandemic. And 78% of them said “YouTube is essential” to the growth of their business.
“When business owners of all sizes share content that informs, educates and entertains, it helps them build an organic audience, which in the future can convert into customers,” Oxford Economics says in the research report.
“And rather than just getting product and service information, YouTube users can search for specific content, watch tutorials, and hear feedback directly from the business owner.”