Video-sharing platform YouTube generated over 350 billion yen ($2.5 billion) in economic effects in Japan last year, partly through advertising revenues paid to content creators, a private-sector survey showed Tuesday.
Increased usage of the website due to the coronavirus pandemic has helped boost the economic impact from 239 billion yen in the previous year, according to results from the survey commissioned by the U.S. company to British research firm Oxford Economics.
The platform, which allows people to post videos on a wide variety of genres as well as companies to distribute news and entertainment, also helped create the equivalent of more than 100,000 full-time jobs.
The economic effects were also calculated through revenues generated through product advertisements and purchases made for equipment and services needed for content production.
The figure for job generation was calculated by equating the total number of working hours to those of full-time employees, as some only input a few hours a week into content creation.
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