YouTube has put traditional media companies like Disney and Netflix on watch, grabbing the top spot in share of TV viewing among media companies for months running. But the Google platform is far from done.
“It’s still early days,” Kurt Wilms, senior director of product, told Business Insider in an interview on Tuesday. “Especially with Gen Z.”
“YouTube’s always known that creators are the lifeblood of what people want to watch, and I think it’s flattering that other streamers are figuring that out and talking to creators, too,” he said.
On Tuesday, YouTube announced a slew of new products and updates at Made on YouTube, an annual event in New York for independent creators.
This year, a big focus was on how YouTube is helping creators build businesses from TV viewership. YouTube said the number of channels earning six figures and up in revenue from TV screens grew 45% year over year. (The company didn’t share the number of channels.)
YouTube also revealed that, on average, over 30% of daily logged-in viewers watched live content on the platform.
On the product side, notable updates included:
- Creators will be able to swap one sponsor for another so they can continue to monetize videos over time.
- Shorts creators will be able to add a brand’s link to their videos so viewers can click to buy.
- New ad formats will run next to livestreams so they don’t interrupt the stream and push away viewers.
- It’s rolling out a way for creators to transition from free to members-only livestreams, which can help them build a new revenue stream.
Where YouTube is focused next
As for what’s coming next, Wilms said offstage that he was focused on both poles of the viewing experience YouTube encompasses — lean-forward, interactive viewing and passive viewing.
Unlike traditional TV players, YouTube houses an array of different content formats in one app, Wilms said.
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“What we’ll continue to invest in going forward is just making all of these content experiences work really great on the TV,” he said.
That will entail more TV-like ad formats, like commercial ad pods and pause ads, which were recently introduced. He’s also interested in direct response formats that push people to visit a website or install an app. Those types of ads are trickier to pull off in the TV environment because you can’t just click to an app store or web browser, he said. Look for more tools that make videos look great on the TV screen and more ways for creators to make money with paid memberships, he added.
One new driver of TV viewing for YouTube is TV-like series from top creators like Dhar Mann and Alan Chikin Chow.
YouTube is encouraging this format by matching advertisers to creators and hosting events for them to mingle at. It will also soon use AI to suggest creators who could be a good fit for brands.
But making such shows requires big budgets, so some creators are looking for more monetization help from YouTube. This raises questions about YouTube’s historically hands-off role and whether it would eventually seek a cut of brand deals it helped set up.
“The vast majority of us make our money through brand deals and sponsorships,” YouTuber Samir Chaudry said Tuesday in discussing the topic.
