YouTube just released some new stats showing how the service is being consumed on TVs, and the numbers are huge. Viewing time for sports content on television increased 30 percent year over year; Viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts on their televisions each month.
We're talking about YouTube, so of course the numbers are huge. The salon has been the fastest growing platform on YouTube for years, Alphabet's chief commercial officer, Philipp Schindler, said on the company's website. most recent earnings call that watch time is increasing on YouTube “with particular strength in shorts and in the living room.” Although YouTube continues to dominate basically every facet of the entertainment business, the arrow on your TV still points up.
The trend hasn't changed in a long time, but YouTube has spent the last few years finally doing something about it. It launched a way to sync your phone and your TV, so you can watch a video on the big screen and interact with it on the small one. Earlier this year, the company redesigned the TV interface to make it easier to find comments, links, and channel pages while watching a video. Redesigned those channel pages so that content starts playing more quickly on your TV. He added collaborative playlists, so multiple people can sit down and program the big screen.
Today, along with all those stats, YouTube announced a new feature called Watch With, which allows creators to add their own commentary and analysis to sports content in real time. For years, YouTube has seen viewers and creators hack this type of setup together, says Kurt Wilms, YouTube's senior product manager for TV. “They'll put the commentary on their computer or their phone, and then they'll put the game on their TV.” Now there is no problem with two screens. The feature starts with sports, but Wilms says you'll soon be able to see it all over YouTube. “There's the Apple keynote,” he offers as an example. “All the creators talking about it, you can imagine it with Watch With.”
Getting the experience right in the living room has always been tricky for YouTube. The company has always tried to make the platform feel the same no matter how you consume it; The theory is that YouTube should feel like YouTube no matter what screen you're looking at and that creators shouldn't have to think about everything. platforms individually, but just focus on creating things for YouTube as a whole. That's pretty complicated to do on mobile and desktop devices, but TVs are a completely different beast. You are usually further away from the screen; you don't have easy access to a full keyboard; Let's be honest, you're probably looking at your phone too.
YouTube is trying to become a premium streaming service
Wilms tells me that an easy way to think of YouTube in the living room is as a study in extremes. On the one hand, it is the largest screen in your home and almost certainly the place where you watch with the greatest dedication and concentration. That's why YouTube created faster-playing channels and created a new Shows page that allows creators to organize their videos more like a Netflix series. It has invested in Primetime Channels and Sunday Ticket and many other high-end contents. YouTube is trying to become a premium streaming service, without losing focus on creators.
But on the other hand, many people use their TV as a sound system or just want some TV in the background. “The TV is the new home stereo,” says Wilms. Music is very popular on the living room YouTube and, according to him, that is why podcasts are also booming; You're just putting on something to listen to while you wash dishes or clean, but now there's also something to watch.
As YouTube has grown on TVs, it has become a bigger part of the creator economy: The company said earlier this year that the number of creators who make the majority of their income from watching TV has increased more than 30 percent since last year. So the question for those creators and for YouTube is what to do about it. Should creators start uploading different types of videos aimed at viewers on their couch instead of their phone? Should they make videos that fans can listen to instead of watch?
Wilms acknowledges that the TV audience might want something slightly different from other YouTube platforms. He says creators are asking for better platform-specific analytics and hinting that perhaps YouTube shows should be treated like TV shows on IMDb and found on platforms like JustWatch. But he says he's convinced all of this may also look like YouTube. “Our model is to bring all of YouTube to television,” he says. “How does it work in television, without overloading the creators or forcing them to do different things?”
That's been the question for a while now. Can YouTube be super interactive and super immersive, leaning back and forth in equal measure? Can it be home to all your favorite vloggers and the next big hit show? The company believes it can do it. And to be fair, history says he's right: it already dominates viewing time across all platforms, is one of the largest music platforms, is rapidly devouring podcasting, is now a major cable competitor, and much more. If YouTube can make the big screen and the small screen look like the same screen, it will be even more unstoppable. But it won't be easy to do it right.
I joke with Wilms that the solution is obviously to just build a TV, and he's pretty clear that that's not going to happen. But he is determined to surpass the one you already have.
