“YouTube is the new TV,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan proclaims in his annual letter. Twenty years ago, YouTube first streamed its videos on traditional computers, before finding a dominant place on smartphones. But things have continued to evolve. TV is overtaking mobile and is now the primary device (by viewing time) for watching YouTube content in the United States, he explains.
The “new” TV versus the old
“For more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube,” the CEO says. The average daily viewing time on a TV is around 1 billion hours. The “new” TV is nothing like the “old” TV: “it’s interactive and includes things like Shorts (yes, people watch them on TV), podcasts and live streams, in addition to sports, sitcoms and talk shows.” That explains YouTube’s investment in its TV app, which is increasingly looking like Netflix.
YouTube has also been the number one streaming service across all platforms for two years, again on the other side of the Atlantic. Americans are turning to YouTube to keep up with the latest news; this has been especially true for election-related content (the platform had 45 million viewers on Election Day).
This success in the skylights also allows YouTube to rake in some juicy advertising revenue. The platform is therefore doing its utmost to accommodate advertisers (and annoy viewers), hence the presence of QR codes and pauses in playback "sponsored" by advertising.
The buzzword "AI" is also celebrated in the letter from the CEO of YouTube. The service has multiplied the functions to generate backgrounds and soundtracks, but creators mainly use AI to help them with less spectacular, more down-to-earth tasks such as creating a thumbnail, suggesting titles or even videos.
YouTube has also experimented with an automatic AI dubbing system, which can sometimes give successful results, and sometimes a little strange. In any case, this allows you to reach other audiences. YouTube will roll out the option to all creators enrolled in the Partners Program by the end of the month.
Source: YouTube
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