If you saw last week’s blog about YouTube you would have seen that the online video site now accounts for 20% of all visits to social networking sites in the UK as the second biggest social platform after Facebook. YouTube is not only the third most popular website online, it is also a significant provider of traffic to other websites. 1 in every 59 visits to a UK website comes from YouTube, making it the fifth most prolific source of traffic in the UK.

There is a natural affinity between YouTube and the Entertainment category, and the highest proportion of visitors (17%) go on to an entertainment website after a visit to YouTube. However there are always a few surprises and this week the biggest was Viking Direct. The stationary retailer was an unexpected recipient of a lot of YouTube traffic yesterday.

Viking Direct is an office supplies chain, and not the usual sort of brand you would expect to see picking up a lot of traffic from YouTube. On 12 May however, Viking Direct was the 8th biggest recipient of traffic from YouTube in the UK, with 1% of all YouTube visits leaving for Viking Direct.
The video responsible for this traffic is Viking Direct’s new advert which at the time of writing has received over 165,000 YouTube views. As a result, Viking Direct’s traffic has increased six-fold in the last seven days.

On 12 May Viking Direct received its highest ever spike in traffic, putting it considerably ahead of its competitors in the office supply market. An incredible 62% of all traffic to the website came from YouTube that day.

At the peak of traffic yesterday, Viking Direct was receiving nearly four times as much traffic as Staples. This is evidence that even a relatively modest foray into online video can have significant effects on web traffic.
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