For Social Media Savants: Distinguishing Between IGTV & YouTube

IGTV VS YouTube: Should Video Content Creators Use One Platform or The Other?

Shanoon Cox

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

IGTV receives quite a lot of attention from marketers and content creators alike. Some even go so far to compare IGTV to YouTube, currently, the largest video sharing platform in the world that hosts 300 minutes of video each minute. IGTV may have fewer users than YouTube, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to use it effectively for a wide array of different purposes. So, in this article, we are going to take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of each platform in order to help you discover how you can utilize each of these social networks to broaden the audience for the content you share online.

You May Also Like:
Instagram Reels VS Instagram Stories–Everything You Need to Know >>
YouTube Shorts vs. TikTok: Which One Is Better? >>

IGTV VS YouTube: What’s the difference

Comparison between IGTV and YouTube is somewhat unfair towards the former since IGTV is a much younger platform that still needs time to develop. YouTube, on the other hand, has a reputation as one of the most reliable video sharing platforms ever created that enables people from all walks of life to upload and share music, movies, gaming videos and virtually any other type of moving images. Even so, let’s take a look at major differences and similarities between IGTV and YouTube.

Have a Quick Glance of the Differences

01 Interface Differences

02 The Upload Process

03 Discovering New Content

03 Monetization

03 Analytics and Insights

1. Interface Differences

Despite the fact that you can access IGTV from a web browser, this platform is predominantly dedicated to videos that are going to be watched on mobile devices. This also means that the thumbnails of the videos you uploaded to your IGTV channel are going to be displayed differently than those on your YouTube channel. The interfaces of these two social networks are entirely different, but if you are a newcomer to each of these platforms you won’t have much trouble getting used to them.

2. The Upload Process

The fact that you can only upload vertically oriented videos to IGTV somewhat limits your options because you either have to record a video for IGTV specifically or you must edit a horizontally oriented video and change its aspect ratio to 9:16. You can upload videos to YouTube and IGTV directly from your computer or you can use iPhone and Android-based apps to capture videos with your phone and upload them to either of these platforms. The maximum duration of an IGTV video can’t exceed sixty minutes, while the default duration of all videos on YouTube is set to 15 minutes. Nonetheless, if you own a verified YouTube account, you can upload videos that have 128GB and last up to 12 hours.

At the moment the videos you want to upload to your IGTV channel have to be saved in the MP4 file format because the platform still doesn’t offer support for any other video file format. YouTube grants much more freedom in this respect as it allows you to upload videos saved in AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4 and other commonly used file formats.

3. Discovering New Content

IGTV is more than a decade younger than YouTube, so you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re having trouble discovering new content. Moreover, IGTV’s search engine is still relatively new and it is much less powerful than the one used by YouTube. This is the reason why the videos you upload to your YouTube channel are going to be much easier to find via a simple Google search than those you shared on IGTV. Besides, YouTube offers much more new content on a daily basis than IGTV, and it is clear that the Instagram’s new brainchild still has ways to go before it reaches the point when it can challenge the largest video sharing platform in the world in terms of diversity of the content that it delivers to its users.

4. Monetization

At the moment, views and likes can’t be monetized on IGTV, so most influencers rely on sponsorships from brands. Things may change as the platform grows, but for the time being IGTV doesn’t provide the content creators with any compensation for the work they are putting in. YouTube allows content creators to monetize their videos through Google Adsense for years, and some of its most prominent users like PewDiePie or Logan Paul have earned hundreds of millions of dollars by posting new content on their YouTube channels. Keep in mind that you are going to need at least a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewing time before you can enable YouTube’s Monetize feature.

5. Analytics and Insights

Knowing how many people watched the entire video or how many likes and comments certain types of videos get can help you produce content that attracts a larger audience on all social networks. The metrics such as engagement or view-through rates can be essential during online marketing campaigns as they can suggest how many people are watching your videos and for how long. The analytics tools YouTube provides are much more diverse than those offered by IGTV that only lets you see the audience retention graph and the number of views and comments a video currently has. YouTube is an obviously a much better option for anyone who wants to conduct an in-depth analysis of their content’s performance, although the tools on IGTV are still powerful enough to indicate which type of content your audience likes the most.

Why Shouldn’t You Use YouTube and IGTV For the Same Purposes?

You shouldn’t assume that you can post the same type of videos on your YouTube and IGTV channels, just because they are both video sharing platforms. The content you create for your IGTV channel needs to be dynamic and entertaining in order to captivate the audience’s attention. Posting tutorials or hour-long gaming videos on IGTV won’t attract as many viewers as on YouTube, which is why businesses who want to use IGTV to promote their products and services need to choose the content carefully. Furthermore, the videos that last between two and five minutes are still by far the most popular on IGTV, so even though technically you can upload a video that lasts one hour to your IGTV channel, the chances are that such long videos won’t get a lot of views.

IGTV is probably best used as a tool that can help improve the engagement with your followers on Instagram, but if you want to become an established video content creator, then running a YouTube channel is simply a much better option. It still remains to be seen how will IGTV evolve in the years to come, but at the present moment this platform doesn’t really have any chance of challenging YouTube’s position as the world’s leading video sharing platform.

However, no matter which video platform you choose, you need to ensure the videos you create are of high quality. A good video editing software like Filmora can help you acheive this goal.

Useful Features of Filmora

• Cokor Matching: Apply color correction setting to multiple clips on one-click.
• Effects: Create blockbuster videos with preset effects.
• Motion Tracking: Track moving items and add elements to it at ease.
• And more waiting for you to discover.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Snapshot Surprises: Yearly YT Stats & Trends in Graphics

Infographic - Mind Numbing YouTube Facts,Figures and Statistics

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Since YouTube.com domain was first registered more than a decade ago, it has become one of the most used video sharing platforms on the planet. Former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in 2005 and only a year later their platform was one of the world’s fastest growing websites, surpassing MySpace with more than 100 million video views in the July of the same year. It wasn’t long before YouTube was purchased by Google on November 13. 2006 and since then the world’s most popular video sharing platform has grown continuously.

In 2017, more than 500 hours of video content are being uploaded to YouTube each minute, and over 1.5 billion active users utilize it to share their memories, music they love, business ideas or anything else they feel strongly about. The following infographic will present some of the most interesting YouTube facts and statistics that will enable you to understand better one of the most popular websites ever created.

It’s hard to pick highlights from such an interesting and comprehensive read, but a couple of key stats shine out.

• YouTube has just 0,5 billion users less than Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg is perhaps one of the best-known business geniuses who made his fortune by creating the social network everyone wanted to be a part of. With more than 2 billion active users Facebook is the largest online community on the Internet today. YouTube has 1.5 billion active monthly users which makes it the second largest platform of its kind, well ahead of Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.

• People aged 24 to 44 watch the most videos on YouTube

This information isn’t particularly surprising since younger generations use the Internet more frequently than the older ones. 49% of all YouTube users are aged between 24 and 44, but this statistic will likely change in the future since YouTube’s popularity can only increase. What comes in as a surprise is the fact that men spend 24% more time on YouTube than women. Could it be that men are more interested in music, short videos or promotional business videos than women or perhaps, women are simply more practical and thus tend to spend less time aimlessly going through endless video content.

• 9% of the videos are taken down because of the copyright infringements

At one point in the early 2000’s, it seemed as if the copyright laws will be changed forever by the Internet. Since then countless initiatives have prevented YouTube users to view, upload or share content that they don’t have the permission to use. In 2017, 9% of all videos uploaded on YouTube are taken down by the copyright holders. This means that YouTubers must make sure that all content they upload is unique or that they at least have a permission to use it.

• An average person spends 40 minutes on YouTube each day

YouTube is probably one of the best pastimes the Internet can offer, and for that reason, a common person spends 40 minutes on YouTube per day. When you add an average life expectancy into the equation the math shows that during their lifetimes, people spend nearly 2 years on YouTube, or 1 year and 10 months to be exact.

• Pop music singers are the most popular celebrities on YouTube

Naturally, music is the most searched term on YouTube, and celebrities like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry or Rihana have millions of subscribers with billions of total video views. Unlike Facebook where the most popular celebrities are Christiano Ronaldo or Vin Diesel, an actor and a football player, YouTube stars are mostly musicians and Pop Culture icons whose music is available to fans across the globe because of this platform. Some of the historically most viewed videos on YouTube are Luis Fonsi’s Despacito, Psy’s Gangnam Style or Tayler Swift’s Shake it Off that all have a staggering amount of views.

Let us know what you think about these interesting facts about YouTube in the comments below and feel free to share this article with your friends and colleagues.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett