New research complied by Perfecto has revealed which platforms are being most utilised by growing businesses when it comes to digital testing plans – with YouTube, Facebook and WhatsApp leading the way.

The Digital Test Coverage Index, which uses Perfecto’s enterprise data and current market usage data, found that YouTube has the “most consistent” monthly active users (MAUs) for media and entertainment apps in the six survey countries.

Perfecto analysed the US, UK, Canadian, German, Australian and Brazilian markets. The digital business stated that businesses building a test plan must make sure it includes testing apps with YouTube running in the background.

“Making sure a mobile app can stand up to real user environments is key to delivering a high-quality user experience,” said Roi Carmel, chief strategy officer at Perfecto. “End users today have high expectations from mobile apps and use many apps that compete for CPU, storage, battery and network bandwidth – all of these factors impact the overall experience for the user and therefore, the brand’s digital reputation. When building a test plan, considering a variety of factors, will help immensely in navigating the complex digital quality landscape.”

The research also revealed that Amazon and Amazon Shopping were the most-used shopping apps in four of the surveyed countries (Brazil and Australia prefer local companies), while Facebook and Facebook Messenger are the most popular social apps in the US and Canada.

Retail apps were found to be very popular, but based largely on which were the most localised for a particular geography.

Separate research carried out by eMarketer found that programmatic video advertising spending is on the rise, driven primarily by YouTube. Programmatic spend on video is expected to reach 60 per cent of US digital video ad spending during 2016, up from 39 per cent het previous year.

YouTube is predicted to be taking home 21 per cent of US digital video ad revenue, with that proportion even larger in the programmatic space because of its “bullish adoption” of programmatic advertising.

Back in February 2015, YouTube reached its 10th anniversary. Statistics back then showed it had over a billion users, with 300 hours of video uploaded each minute. Half of all video views were through mobile devices and revenue for that segment was up 100 per cent year-on-year.