ONLINE VIDEO: The Most-Visited Video Sites in LatAm, Country by Country

Just as we saw in the unique user rankings published in mid-November, Google and Facebook are in first and second place, respectively, in the “video” category in Latin America (with the exception of Mexico, where Facebook is third, behind VEVO).

In general terms, as much as these rankings show the transmission of audiovisual content as a common denominator, it is interesting to observe certain particular characteristics:

1. Some sites only permit a passive participation by the user, in the sense that the user can only consume content from the site without adding his or her own (aside from commenting or sharing). Examples of this are Grupo Clarín, Globo, Grupo Televisa and ABC Digital, whose video content is exclusively controlled by the media editor through a clear communications strategy. This way, on these sites, the user cannot make decisions related to, for example, topics, duration or location (on a particular section of the site) of the videos that he or she consumes.
2. Other sites do permit active participation from users, allowing the user to operate like a content editor (deciding to upload his or her own content, choosing topics, uninstalling, determining in which section of the site it will be published, etc.). Facebook and YouTube are examples of this.
3. Regarding distribution, when it comes to websites that allow active participation as well as passive, users have functionalities that allow them to share content with friends and acquaintances.
4. Another phenomenon that we observed is that in the majority of cases, the sites and platforms on the rankings use technology provided by YouTube or Facebook. in other words, as much as the other sites and platforms may have made the top 10, that content still belongs to YouTube and Facebook. Some of these platforms are Maker Studios, Fullscreen, Machinima Entertainment, QuizGroup, ZEFR and ZOOMIN.TV. Of course, they have particularities that differentiate them from each other and that have allowed them to climb into the rankings. But it is important to highlight the role that distribution has for YouTube and Facebook (which explains why both platforms appear in the first two spots of the rankings).
5. Finally, with respect to the quality of the material presented on the sites and platforms on the rankings, there are two noteworthy trends: on the one hand, premium content, and on the other hand, content generated by the user. In the context of this article, anything produced professionally with the objective of illustrating, positioning or reinforcing the ideology of the media outlet that has produced it can be called premium content. This type of content appears on the sites mentioned in the first point. In contrast, content generated by the user is anything “homemade” ( including anything that has been produced by a professional, using high-quality resources). In other words, we understand that content generated by the user, even when it is high-quality, loses its ideological power when it is published in an isolated context among many other homemade videos of different quality. This is the case of the sites and platforms that occupy the second spot in the rankings.

We also see that when the first-ranked sites publish audiovisual content generated by the user, the context of the publication configures the premium treatment that is given to the piece, with which, only in this case, the content generated by the users acquires characteristics of premium material, since it illustrates a certain alignment that the media outlet controls according its own discretion.

We can see these concepts reflected in the rankings from the participating countries here:

[ctalatinb_es]