YouTube CEO says firm’s ‘next frontier’ is living-room viewership, subscriptions

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has laid out the platform’s next major goals as taking an even greater share of overall television viewing time and expanding its subscription business.

Neal Mohan

“YouTube’s next frontier is the living room and subscriptions,” wrote the head of the Google-owned platform in a blog post titled Letter from the YouTube CEO: 4 Big bets for 2024.

“When I started at YouTube, people thought about content from major studios and content from creators as entirely different, but today that stark divide is gone,” he continued.

“Viewers want everything in one place, from a live sports game to the BBC to Khan Academy and NikkieTutorials. And they’re watching YouTube the way we used to sit down together for traditional TV shows – on the biggest screen in the home with friends and family.”

Globally, consumers now watch one billion hours of YouTube content on their televisions each day, said Mohan, who cited Nielsen data showing YouTube has been the leader in streaming viewership in the US – ahead of Netflix and all the traditional streaming services – for the past 11 months.

The rise of YouTube as a powerhouse of living-room content consumption has been a growing talking point in recent months, with media commentator Evan Shapiro last week saying it “poses a truly existential threat” to the traditional TV ecosystem as a competitor for eyeballs.

In the UK, too, brand marketing agency EssenceMediacom recently predicted that YouTube will “leapfrog” Netflix this year in terms of viewership on big screens.

Mohan continued that for YouTube creators, an increasingly fundamental part of their strategy is making sure their content is made to be watched on a television screen.

According to the platform, the number of top creators who garnered the majority of their viewing time on televisions has increased by more than 400% over the past three years. Examples include Ms Rachel (an account for toddler learning videos) and SypherPK (gaming videos), both of which saw their living room watchtime double in the second half of 2023, per YouTube.

Meanwhile, its YouTube TV subscription service in the US, which allows users to watch live feeds of broadcast and cable networks, has now surpassed eight million subscribers.

As it looks to command a greater proportion of big-screen viewership in the US, YouTube also entered the world of big-ticket sporting rights last year when it secured the rights to premium sports package NFL Sunday Ticket.

Elsewhere in his letter, Mohan said content creators “should be recognised as next-generation studios,” rather than being shunned as a lesser form of storytelling.

“They’re redefining the future of the entertainment industry with top-notch storytelling that can’t be dismissed as simply ‘user-generated content,'” he argued.

Mohan added that a major focus this year is to “help policymakers and partners across the industry see the economic and entertainment value that creators bring to the table.” He did not elaborate on how YouTube will do this, but said he wants governments to acknowledge the economic value provided by YouTube creators in their labour data.

“Being a creator is a full-time job with an international audience, but most governments don’t account for creators in their labour data. We believe creators should be recognised for their work and creators at the top of their game should be acknowledged in key industry forums.”

Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) was number one on Mohan’s list of priorities for the year.

In September, YouTube released Dream Screen, a tool that allows users to make AI-generated backgrounds for YouTube Shorts. In its own right, YouTube Shorts has become a viewing phenomenon, averaging more than 70 billion views each day globally, and the introduction of AI creation tools is only spurring its growth.

While the potential dangers of AI are still being understood, Mohan said the company would continue to build out “appropriate protections” at the same time as giving creators the tools to “push the boundaries of creative expression.”