Do you recall the day YouTube went live in November 2005? Just imagine: before that historic date, there weren’t any video-sharing websites. And probably no adorable kitten videos or talking-baby clips either. I remember wondering at the time about where they would obtain the necessary volumes of video? And who would ever watch a 24/7 video channel? Could there really be an audience for people’s ordinary slices of life?

Now YouTube is the third-most visited website on the Internet, after Google and Facebook. And it’s the second-largest search engine on the Web, after Google, its owner. More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the three major U.S. television networks produced in 60 years.

Which begs the question, with 4 billion hits each day and 60 hours of video uploaded every minute, what can you do to take advantage of this enormous public-access broadcast channel?

Some compelling statistics about video marketing include:

Ninety percent of consumers interviewed by Internet Retailer said that video played a part in their buying decisions for products and services.

Click-through rates for email go up 96 percent when videos are included in the introduction.