vaatajaid

Vaatajaid is the Estonian partitive plural form of vaataja, meaning "viewer" or "spectator." As a grammatical form, vaatajaid is used to indicate an indefinite or partial quantity of viewers and appears after verbs, numerals in certain contexts, and in expressions that require the partitive case. It contrasts with the nominative plural vaatajad, which refers to a definite group of viewers.

In media and communications, vaatajaid commonly appears in descriptions of audience size and engagement: television ratings, livestream and video platform metrics, event attendance estimates and news reports often use the term when referring to the number of people watching. In this usage the form emphasizes an unspecified or measured portion of an audience rather than a named, fixed group.

The word derives from the verb vaatama ("to look" or "to watch") with the agentive suffix -ja, a common formation pattern in Finnic languages to denote a person performing an action. Comparable words exist in related languages that denote viewers or spectators.

Beyond statistics, vaatajaid appears in commentary on audience behavior, media studies and cultural discussions about viewership trends, representation and reception. Its grammatical role in Estonian makes it a frequent term in everyday speech, journalism and technical descriptions of media consumption.