Everyone wants to be the “YouTube of China,” but they’re not

January 9, 2008 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

Every time we hear from one of the numerous Chinese video sites, they compare themselves to YouTube in its early days. But a closer look at the data suggests the video phenom in China just isn’t comparable.

youtube-china.jpg

For example, Youku reports today that the number videos viewed daily on its site has reached the levels YouTube enjoyed in Oct. 2006 when it was acquired by Google. This follows a similar statement by another Chinese competitor 56.com.

Youku says it has 100 million daily views, citing Nielsen/Netrating, which is indeed the level of views that YouTube had back in the day. That’s a whopping 30 million more views per day in November, when we first wrote about the company. However, Youku has far fewer unique visitors than YouTube did back in 2006, according to Comscore’s global data. And while no slouch, Youku doesn’t appear to be growing in the same upward right manner YouTube did, almost without exception — and continues to grow today. Unless Comscore’s data is dreadfully wrong, which is a possibility. However, Youku also has several competitors who say they are growing just as quickly. For example, Tudou and 56.com are just as large, if not larger, in terms of traffic.

Youku has raised US $40 million in three rounds of of funding from Brookside Capital, an affiliate of Bain Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures.

Aside from the question about Comscore’s reliability, there’s a story brewing about the statistics game that is going on in China right now, at least according to what we’re hearing. We’ll try to follow up shortly.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • spellchecker
    there's a typo in the headline, and at least one more in your story.
  • Comscore vs. Netratings
    There is a fundamental error with your analysis. Comscore results is based on an extrapolation of a sample drawn biased towards the US and so any international site, including Youku, would show lower than actual traffic in Comscore reports.

    Youku's press release is based on Nielsen Netratings results, which is based on site census (measurement of the entire site and not an extrapolation from a random sample, which still has statistical errors), so in that sense, more accurate than Comscore.

    Having said that, Youku is definitely not as big as Youtube now and they are more comparable to Youtube's size last year around the time they were acquired by Google.
  • a) Their methodologies are very different. As 'Comscore vs. Netratings" pointed out, it is almost impossible to compare Comscore and Netratings data especially about China.
    b) While Netratings is a newcomer to the Chinese market (their initial report is dated September 2006). Comscore does not even have an office in China. I have contacted them several times and they could not deliver China specific numbers
    c) While I do have my doubt about numbers published by Tudou, Youku, Ku6 and the like, I have no doubts about online video in China. It is huge in China in whatever guise or form
    d) While monetizing this traffic in a problem for Youtube in the US already, monetization is a real bummer in China.
  • Stats Checker
    I have no special insight into the latest count of daily video views and unique visitors for YouTube, Youku or any of its competitors, but common sense suggests that a fair and accurate comparison of statistics should be backed by data developed by market research firms using similar approaches and methodologies.

    Nielsen/Net Rating and Comscore might be an apples to oranges comparison.