Google and YouTube highlight content surge at Dubai event

YouTube and parent company Google hosted in Dubai on Tuesday the tech-giant’s “first” event catered for the advertising industry in the Gulf emirate.

More than 200 people attended “YouTube Pulse,” along with executives from Google and YouTube, according to a press release.

The event “highlighted the development of the content creator ecosystem globally and in the region, growing channels on the platform and audiences on YouTube,” the statement said.

Citing data from a recent Google connected survey, YouTube revealed that 90 percent of smartphone users in the UAE watch online videos on their phone.

Figures released by the video-sharing website also showed that the YouTube app ranked second in the UAE in terms of time spent.

“Advertisers and content creators are using YouTube to entertain, inspire and inform their most valuable audiences,” global head of content and operations at YouTube Robert Kyncl said.

“The MENA region has amazing talent and the content that is being created on YouTube is getting better every single year,” he added.

The numbers of total views on the video-sharing site have continued to grow by 50 percent since 2013, the statement said, adding that 6 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube by more than 1 billion people around the world.