Despite broadband limitations and network interruptions, YouTube has warmed its way into the hearts of Nigerians.
In 2012, the number of YouTube views in Nigeria grew by 125 percent, making Nigeria the country with the second highest viewership growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The figures place Ghana in the top spot with a 140 percent growth. Nigeria is ahead of other Sub-Saharan African countries with local YouTube domains. Kenyan views grew by 95%, South African views by 80%, Uganda by 75% and Senegal by 75%.
YouTube has been a good avenue for Nigerian content creators to publish videos to the world and monetize them with its ad partnership program.
“Nigerians have embraced YouTube, creating and watching locally created and relevant content in the different local languages,” said Google’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager for West Africa, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade. “They are part of a highly connected global community that uploads 72 hours of video every minute and watches 4 billion hours of video a month.”
Among all the videos uploaded from Nigeria to YouTube in 2012, a large number of them were entertainment related. Nigerian music artistes and Nollywood’s creators have finally embraced the service as another path to monetising content.
Google began launching localised versions of YouTube for Sub-Saharan countries in December 2012. The localised versions pushed local content to the YouTube homepage of users across Africa, encouraging subscriptions and uploads.
That decision seems to have paid off. What do you think?
Tags : youtube, YouTube Nigeria
