We interviewed the CEO of YouTube

26:01I think it's both sides of the coin, right? It's both sides of the coin. It's exciting. And it's also scary because what do you do when you don't have control? Yeah. I also think right now we may be uniquely experiencing it perhaps more than some other creators because obviously like in that episode with Mr. Beast, he is someone who is linked to money and giving away money. Yeah. Right? So that's easier. I think I'm sure finance creators have that problem. I know they have that problem in the comments with like bots and things like that. There is. I imagine though it's something that like we may be a little bit ahead right now in terms of having that fear and optimism in that scenario.

26:38There is a conversation about AI in the creator community primarily because of a creator named Kwebelkop. Are you familiar with his channel? A little bit. Yeah. He's transitioned to essentially an AI generated version of himself. It's an avatar. The transcripts are AI generated. The voice is AI generated. And that's caused some polarity in the creator community of like, it's not a fully autonomous channel, but it feels like it's moving in a direction where these are, you know, like it's like a VTuber, but the transcripts are based on a history of 10 years of content creation. That has caused some polarity of like, is that a positive or negative for the ecosystem and health of YouTube?

27:16What do you guys think? I get concerned when I think about if there is an influx of semi-autonomous content and it perhaps floods YouTube. That's your concern is the flooding piece. Yeah, and there is perhaps an appetite for it and it starts to change what it means for viewers to enjoy the platform and what it means for creators to succeed on the platform. If there truly is so much. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think it remains to be seen for sure, right? Like nobody knows the sort of the full picture there. My feeling is, and this has been my experience on YouTube, which is the content that audiences want to see ultimately is sort of what rises to the top.

28:06And our corpus is pretty enormous already. And there's a distribution of engagement with videos. They're not all sort of created equal. Now, you said something I think there, Colin, that I think is interesting, which is like the fear is maybe the audiences gravitate towards that. That's certainly a possibility. I still come back to the fact that like what really really makes YouTube what it is is is you guys like it's it's it's creators and it like creators are like human beings right like we watch live sports because we want to see the best humans compete against each other in that type of an environment and it's like that's a form of storytelling because you're like you're connected you're invested in those people that are there as opposed to if they were like bots.

28:57arguing, you know, playing against each other. And so that's my take. Just quickly on live sports, and we'll get deeper into live sports. But I also think that it's the best unscripted content out there because you don't know where it's going. Yes. Right? And that, I think, is becoming harder and harder to find the more content gets uploaded on streaming platforms and on YouTube. It's like, we kind of have a sense of the storytelling formats now. Yeah. Although what I was going to say is the reason why you gravitate towards maybe sports in this case is because it's like a real human being and you don't know where they're going.

29:29It's a story that's unfolding. And I think that that aspect is, back to your kind of original question, that's going to remain. Yeah, well, I think also that everyone has a feeling of ownership over YouTube as a creator of like whatever got them into YouTube. And then a fear that YouTube will look different, right? Like we as creators constantly talk about what the meta is of the moment. And like when we really got into, when we started the Colin and Samir channel was during what we call like the Casey Neistat era when Casey was vlogging and it felt so uniquely human. You know, and now we're kind of in this, I'd say format driven era of challenges and game shows and almost like the reinvention of reality TV onto YouTube.

30:13And so I think everyone has like a fear that the meta changes to something that they're uncomfortable with. But it is at the end of the day, I think the AI fear comes because audiences actually might like it. If you look at animated content, one of the arguments was if Spongebob was an AI-generated voice and an AI-generated transcript, would you care? Probably not. Yeah. I mean, although I just still think that whether it's music, whether it's creative content, like what you produce, what creators produce, that human aspect of it, I just think is going to be core to what YouTube is. I mean, I do think that one of the kind of our lifeblood and what really distinguishes us from any other platform out there, even in this multi-format world, even with things like trends and kind of the thing of the day, is like creators.

31:07Like what I love to hear, for example, is when, you know, creators describe their experience with YouTube shorts is like they say things like, oh, when I'm on YouTube shorts, I feel like my audience remembers who's on the other side of that camera. They remember my face. And as opposed to like, you know, just going zipping through kind of a feed sort of thing. And I would argue that that is because our ethos is about creators, right? Like that's ultimately what it's about. And you're right, the meta format du jour, et cetera, might change over time. And yes, creators have to adjust to those types of things, but it still comes back to the fact that it is ultimately about the creators.

31:50I do think one thing I've heard you talk about before is connection. What makes YouTube different is the connection to the audience. Yeah, that's our magic. And I think for us, we push a lot of creators to think about the concept of building depth with their audience rather than just sheer width. Yeah. And for us, that comes in the form of very long form conversation. We're able to build depth with our audience through that. And we look at depth and measure depth from the perspective of watch time and AVD, average view duration. I'm curious how you think about measuring connection. I mean, I think personally, I think it really varies across creator types.

32:35I would argue that with short form content, creators on YouTube are able to establish, you know, creators that have leaned into that format. They're not producing, you know, two hour, one hour conversations, super in-depth conversations like this. They're producing content that's 15 to 30 seconds. But I would argue over some period of time, they can have that depth of engagement with their audience in that format too. Gamers, we have gamers from 10-hour live streams to producing 30-second shorts. And I would argue that that varies from creator to creator. Podcasters on our platform connect with their audience in different ways than vloggers do.

33:17And so I do think that that's – it's different. My experience is that it's different from creator to creator. and the common thread is that YouTube's the platform that allows you to actually do that in the first place. I mean, we have creators that have never done anything like a post in between their video uploads. We have creators that lean into that super, super heavily and that's where their connection and creativity is. And so I would argue to them, and I think this is the way they think about it, is it's not just about engagement time on their videos, it's about that interaction that they're having on their posts in between videos.

33:52And that's all depth of audience in my mind. Do subscribers still matter, Neil? I mean, you guys know this. And you know how roughly our algorithm works. I mean, I do think that they matter in a whole multitude of ways, right? Obviously, we still have the subscriptions feed. I think that they're an important part of the picture. Yeah, what do you guys think? I mainly just want to know if they're going to remain an important part or if they're going to lessen in significance. Because I think that was one of our concerns. Why do you think they would, what do you think would change it? I think we've realized that we grew a lot because of shorts in terms of subscribers in 2022.

34:35And it didn't feel like there was a heavy direct correlation. It always comes down to, do we make the best video each week? 100%, yeah. I also think the question that I always have is like active subscribers. And we look at returning viewers as a metric of like how active is our community. Because again, we're constantly trying to measure the depth of connection that we currently have. And that can be quantifiable through average views per video. That can be quantifiable through returning viewers, engagements per video. But subscribers to me feels like the least relevant metric to our depth of connection because they could have subscribed five years ago for something completely different and not be interested.

35:14I think it's part of the mix and I think it varies from channel to channel. I mean, we work with creators. I've talked to many creators who've shifted sort of completely in terms of the nature of the content that they produce. And yeah, in that case, it has a different sort of characteristic versus a creator who's just starting out, for example, or a creator who's been very, very consistent in terms of their format. But, you know, I think that in terms of like has their relative importance changed or decreased or increased, I would say that their subscriber counts are still part of the mix in the same way that they've been on YouTube.

35:47and for YouTube, it's exactly what you guys said. It's about producing that content that's gonna be the most engaging and most relevant for your audience and that's ultimately what matters. Did you ever hide views on videos? Just think about like the context of Instagram and how like now people can keep likes as a private metric. Yeah, I mean, as you know, anytime we make changes to that part of real estate. Actually, don't make that change. Don't make that change. But I thought about it. I was like, this public view thing is like one of the most substantial differences. It's like everyone knows how well we're doing our job.

36:25You know, like publicly. Yeah, even Netflix doesn't share. Yeah. We don't have any plans to change that. I mean, we're a video platform where it's about viewing the videos. And that's kind of core to what we do. Every year at Made On, I feel like I'm kind of waiting for a community product from YouTube. like I you know we have a discord community that's where we engage but to me it almost feels you mean more than comments and posts yeah it feels almost strange that it's off platform that we're like we're building a depth with our community yeah but the comment section is not the best place to foster community the comment section like isn't static every time you put out a new video it's almost like it's going downstream and if you're a community member you're not going to come back to a video that's maybe two weeks old and have that conversation or months old and the nice thing about like a discord is that it is that static sort of location but when you guys think about discord in terms of community is it sort of that live aspect that really draws you or is it like sort of like the fact or like the synchronous aspect that sort of is that what you mean by community?

37:29yeah it's probably the synchronous aspect just that like we have there's also a place where you know it's multifaceted in that you can DM you can have you know a conversation about different subject matters you can have threaded conversations and we sort of have that on some of our live content it's not the same way right like with creators engaging in chat and and the like yeah i would say chat is where we see community yeah the the most substantial community on youtube is is chat right in terms of synchronous in terms of synchronous yeah um because asynchronous community is is your audience on your channel yeah really but but i hear you on that yeah that that to me i would say like interesting you know it's one of the biggest opportunities i think yeah for youtube from a product perspective again when we think about like what we're doing, like our business model as creators, right?

38:14And CEO to CEO, let me bring you into the world of Colin and Samir. But like we are building a very specific audience, right? Through our content, people like us, we're building people like us. Now they build a depth of connection that allows us to message to them, advertising messaging, right? Relevant products, relevant advertisers that we do through brand partnerships. Obviously it allows the, you know, YouTube video surfaced to be an advertising surface for relevant products to the people watching. But to take it a step further, if we want to transact directly with our audience, if we want to continue to foster that community, we're taking them off platform to do that.

38:55We're going to, we have a newsletter where we send it three times a week to our audience. We have an email list with them that we can own. We take them to a Discord community. And I think that's the piece for me that you know i look at as partners you know and i'm like i would like to retain some of that inside the ecosystem um but even you know memberships and alternative monetization like we're doing those off platform why i would say to me you know the 70 30 split is is one piece of it that's like it's more competitive off platform and i understand that keeping it in the ecosystem has a lot of value.

39:33But I would also say that, and maybe this is flipping into a question to you, but I'd also say it doesn't necessarily feel like a priority to YouTube. Yeah, I mean, look, again, our priorities are ultimately driven. And I know this because I sit in a ton of these product reviews every single week are driven by what your priorities are. I mean, that is where our roadmap comes from. Even back to the beginning of this conversation in terms of short form content. We got a lot of feedback from creators and from viewers, but from creators around short form content. And so our priorities are driven that way.

40:08I mean, in your point, you said a few things there. You talk about creating those commercial opportunities that feel relevant to your audience. I mean, that's obviously our ads business. We should continue to enable that monetization for you. But we've been investing heavily in enabling shopping opportunities for our creators. And whether they're physical goods, whether they're services, we really do want to enable it. We want to have tagging in your videos, right? Like I think the latest stat I saw was something like 150 billion times we've served up a piece of content, whether it's short or long form, with a shopping video.

40:43Quick aside on that point, we just saw from one of our team members that we made like a significant amount of money in a short that linked through YouTube shopping. to our products. That's awesome. It had 36 million views. It made more than the ad revenue on the short. So I think those are going to be the types of opportunities. Which is significant. And we want to have that, back to your point, like we want to, we think it's good from a viewer standpoint or viewers tell us this to actually have that be as frictionless and seamless as possible because they don't want to get away from what they were on YouTube in the first place doing, which is watching your content.

41:19One thing I think is substantial that we talk about quite a bit internally and don't get any ideas from this, Neil, but I do think it's like very substantial that YouTube doesn't ask to participate in like our brand partnerships business, you know, like, or in the businesses that we're building on top of YouTube or even that are linked through YouTube. I do find that like, when you look at the pie chart of a creator business, like brand deals is going to be probably one of the most substantial or merchandise if you're a different type of creator. And those are both businesses that we get to build on the platform, but, or utilize the platform to build, but retain all the revenue.

41:59Yeah. I mean, I'll just tell you sort of my philosophy on that. And this has gone, you know, and I've been, you know, building products at YouTube for a very long time. It comes back to me about YouTube needs to ultimately, needs to feel like your home and needs to continue to feel like your home. And so when I hear about those types of opportunities that are off-platform business-building opportunities for our creators, I think that's awesome. As long as they feel like their home is still YouTube, their audience is on YouTube. We're enabling this whole broader ecosystem outside of YouTube, but those creators are still YouTubers.

42:41Their audiences. And that's really what I care about. Having said that, like, should we make some of those things easier? Yeah, we're investing in shopping. First party. Being able to link to a third party. We have an affiliate program. We want to create all those opportunities. Channel memberships. We're investing. We're trying to build those products on platform. But if there's ways that you generate money off platform through a newsletter or what have you, like, to me, I think that's pretty awesome because your home is YouTube. That's where you're building your audience. And that's ultimately, I think, great for you.

43:13But it's also, frankly, great for YouTube. On the flip side of that, I'm curious how you feel about creators who are finding off-platform opportunities that are also content driven by advertising. If you think about one of the comments that we got in our Discord was about Emma Chamberlain and the fact that her podcast is exclusive to Spotify. For me, I feel like YouTube would be a better place, because she's so YouTube native, if her podcast were to stay on YouTube. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to have her podcast on YouTube. I mean, you guys know this. Like, we've been investing. It's interesting. Without having us have done much, frankly, you know, that's on us.

43:55We're one of the world's largest podcasting platforms today. And so for the last couple of years, as you know, we've been investing both on the listener side, but actually this year in particular, more on the podcaster side in terms of, like, episode-specific analytics, podcast playlists, those types of features on the viewer side, things like not just having hosted podcasts, but access to RSS feed so you can get those podcasts. So we want to be back to this sort of multi-format thing. We want to be the best platform for podcasters as well. So my answer would be, it's really about your home audience, your home base, the people that know your content and you should be able to connect with them whether you're doing a vlog or a podcast.

44:43And YouTube should be the place for that. That's back to this sort of home-based argument. I think for us, and this might be a little bit of a reaction to shorts, Samir and I, I think, feel very attached to long-form content and to protecting what we see as the bread and butter of YouTube, which is long-form content. And I look at Emma Chamberlain's podcast or creators like Michelle Corre with Challenge Accepted are destroying. And I think, man, I hope that YouTube can keep these people on the platform. And some of them, like in the Emma Chamberlain example, go off because there's an exclusive deal to leave.

45:21And I know on YouTube, there's exclusive deals for streamers. And I wonder, would there ever be exclusive deals for long-form content creators, whether it's podcasts or serialized content. Yeah, I mean, my take on that is ultimately it goes back to what has brought us success, has brought our creators success, is to really focus on the core products, making sure that we are the best long-form platform, the best short-form platform, investing in the product, building the monetization products that make it so that if you invest the time to produce the content, you can generate a return. And that's the only way that I know success comes in the long term.

46:04So that's what I'm going to focus on. That's what we're going to focus on. And so, because otherwise, I feel like everything else is sort of kind of short-term in nature. Let's talk about the NFL deal. NFL Sunday ticket. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the largest deal in Google history? I mean, we do lots of deals at Google. A big deal. $14 billion. An important investment for sure. Are you a big football fan or? I'm a sportsman. Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah. I watch sports. I actually, funny enough, watched Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV in the split screen view, which was super cool. And this NFL deal to me feels like a pretty substantial moment in YouTube history.

46:53And I was, I'm going to give you one feature feedback thing here on YouTube TV, because I know you were heavily involved in YouTube TV. But when I'm watching the NFL on YouTube TV, is there a reason I can't go into a YouTube video? Like, can I, wouldn't it make sense if I could watch like destroying right after or in, in the commercials of, you know, YouTube TV that I could just watch a YouTube video. I have to go out of YouTube and, or out of YouTube TV and into YouTube to watch YouTube. Yeah. I mean, so that's really interesting. I happen to be a big. What I would like and what feels good to me.

47:27I know you can watch Sunday Ticket on YouTube, but you're bringing a ton of audience to a YouTube ecosystem. I would love for that audience to be able to discover us. Yeah. You know, and maybe it's like, yeah, I'm just curious about that. So what I tell you on that, Samir, is I do think that that is going to happen. And I think it's going to happen kind of in both directions. I mean, obviously the NFL has an audience. That audience is on YouTube or YouTube TV now. but I also think there's a latent audience that was on YouTube that is also now going to be more interested in the live games that we have so I do think it's going to go both ways and so I think the short answer to your question is there's no reason why those types of things should not be enabled like I think that they're all pro-user they're pro-creator the great thing about the NFL is one of the reasons why they partnered with YouTube is because of our creator ecosystem you've seen it in there, the amount of content and amount of access that they're giving to creators, but also the amount of just kind of content that's produced organically around live games, which was happening, by the way, before Sunday Ticket, is enormous on our platform.

48:39And now that the live games are actually there, that's just going to grow as well. And so I think that in terms of user choice, like you don't need a dish on your house anymore kind of a thing, In terms of the technology innovation back to building products like Multiview, I love it when we get so much positive feedback on that. And then the third thing is the creator ecosystem. When we meet with the NFL from the commissioner on down, they are very focused on that because they know that's what their fans want, particularly their younger fans. On the creator ecosystem piece, Colin mentioned the NBA playmakers and certain creators being able to create with NBA content.

49:20The NBA rights are up for grabs next year. Do you see that in the future of YouTube? I mean, we're very, I mean, so first of all, the NBA is a big partner of ours. We work with the NBA. We've worked with them for a very, very long time. They have one of the largest sports channels on our platform. And they're very leaned in, as you've seen. Like, they've been working with creators. They have been working with, you know, their own content in many, many different ways for a very long time. um you know right now the focus is you know making sure that we have an incredible sunday ticket experience nfl experience for our fans on the platform um so there's probably nothing i'll say about about that broader sort of rights conversation other than the fact that you know they're one of our close partners just like the nfl is and really again their interest in youtube is for the same reason which is right that's where their fans are particularly their younger fans and the expectation of those younger fans is they want to consume all of that content there all in one spot.

50:21So like your example is actually, I think is a very consumer-driven example. Our largest and fastest growing screen, as you guys know, is the television screen. And the expectation of young people is they want their live game there alongside their favorite creators. And that seamless experiences, I think, is going to be part of the magic that you're going to see here. I think one of the most interesting things is that while I was watching the NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV, I was in the off times scrolling shorts. And the fact that you can have me on both of those devices feels pretty substantial to the future of the platform.

51:01And I think if we can connect where the long form creators fit in, like where does Jesser fit in if I'm watching a live NBA game and then shorts and then can I go over to a long-form gesture video? That, to me, that's the mutually beneficial ecosystem to us as long-form creators too. So I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, one of the reasons why I've been so excited about, I mean, I happen to be a sports fan myself, but a big reason is these types of very pro-viewer type use cases that work for our creator ecosystem, but also then work for the sports leagues as well. So I'm all in on that. We do have to ask you what you watch on YouTube.

51:37That was requested from Marquez. Yeah. Directly to you. Yeah. What do you actually watch? I watch, obviously, you guys. I watch a lot of Marquez. That's the right answer, Gil. You can just stop with us. Just stop. Yeah, there it is. Straight from the YouTube content. I mean, I watch a lot of the creators, people that you've had on your program. Let's see. What else? But I watch a lot of, you know, my sports highlight reel is on YouTube, right? I watch a lot of sports highlights. We're a big music household. So, you know, everything from Taylor Swift to Olivia Rodrigo and everything in between.

52:12Those are kind of... Wow. And they're close together, yes. We have young daughters. I'm saying, aren't they a little bit of a battle right now? Yeah, yeah. So you might just... Well, you know, in our household, they're both very popular, yes. So, yeah, I mean, I could go through a whole list of creators that I watch on a regular basis. I have one more question for you. And I feel like I have to ask you because I get the opportunity to sit with you here. If you were CEO of Colin and Samir, what would you focus on right now? Oh, that is an interesting. Well, first of all, I'm going to say something very naive because you guys have probably thought about it a million times more so than me.

52:51But again, I honestly would come back to, you know, because I get a lot of this. I get these questions from creators regularly. And my sort of kind of point is, and I don't need to tell you guys this because you know this probably better than most, almost any creator in the world, is it really comes back to connecting with your audience, doing what you really find to be the most fulfilling way to do that. So I'm honestly repeating back some of what you said, which is like that depth of audience, like really building that, establishing that home base is the basis of where all the opportunities come from.

53:29And creators that take their eye off that ball, that's where the problem starts. Is there anything more specific that you think, looking out the next five years, knowing that you have an understanding of the vision of YouTube probably best, that we should be thinking about as creators who are committed to YouTube for the foreseeable future? I think a lot of it is going to come down to what we talked about in terms of AI. I do think that that is going to be a platform-type shift in the sense that desktop to mobile was when that happened, meaning that it really is going to change, I think, the creation process, the process by which you connect with your audience.

54:12As I said, I think it's going to do that in a way that is positive for creators. It's going to be an enhancement, but it is going to be an adjustment. And so all these conversations that we had around the intellectual conversation around what are your assets, how do you think about them? That's one aspect. But also then how do you harness the power of this? And I think creators that figure out some of these things or think through them, that's a piece of it. A lot of technology needs to get invented there still to make all of this possible. But I would just, I'd point that out. I do think that it is like a paradigm shift type moment that we find ourselves in.

54:49I appreciate you taking the time. Of course. Yeah, this is awesome. No, I really appreciate you guys making the time. It's great to catch up. You had us here in one of your offices, we would love to have you at ours. Yeah. Come check it out. Yeah, where exactly are you guys? We're in Venice. We're not so far from Google Office. I would love to do that. That'd be great. I'd love to swing by. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We can make this like a regular thing. I'll bring my dad. Sure. I'll be excited to meet you. Yeah. That would be awesome. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Neil. Thanks for making time. Yeah.

55:16Appreciate it. Great. Oh, yes. We do need to take a thumbnail. Yeah. All right. Yeah, we'll have to do. We didn't even talk about it. While you're taking the thumbnail photos, we'll need a few shots because we're going to A-B test. Now we're A-B testing. That was going to be my breaking news to you guys. You guys are going to be in the beta. I'm very excited about that. We're super excited. As Jimmy showed us, we need probably an open mouth and a closed mouth so that we can A-B test properly. That was a brilliant insight. You can look at David. You want me to pull closer? It'll just be you with the mic.

55:50Yeah. Yeah. And we can actually start. Samir, can you move the mic to the side? Yeah. Just move it fully off. Yeah, fully off. Just move it off like that. You'd have to imagine at some point these will be artificially generated, right? We can just give some assets. Yeah, I mean, that's what I meant, by the way, in terms of like creator tools. Like not every creator is going to do that, but that should be something that we should be able to ultimately produce. Like a Netflix where it's like - Or give you like three generated ones. We probably need more than just AB. Yeah, yeah. Right? We kind of need a ton of variations based on individuals.

56:24Yeah, but would you want to be making those choices across? It's always a balance. It might be different for different creators, but how much burden of that choice do you want? Ideally, none. The thing that keeps us up at night is thumbnails. But by the way, no choice in terms of which one it chooses. Would you want to choose amongst 10 artificially generated? No. Right? As long as I felt they were representative of our brand, I would be happy with it. But would you want to have the last right of refusal on that? Yeah, I would want to have guardrails. You'd want to check that box, basically. I would have guardrails to say, here's what I want in a thumbnail, but then I'm happy for you to choose it based on the user.

57:01But you still want to be in the loop before it posts. Yeah, keep me in the loop, Neil. Let me know. Just ping me and just be like, is this one cool? But I'm sure there will be creators ultimately who will say, if I define the guardrails, off to the races. Oh, for sure. I think also if that, you know, the kind of AI assistant in the studio gives me some of that and it's just like - Just recommends that. That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah. Just recommends or just, hey, based on CTR, let's go in this direction. Think about this. That's super helpful because we are, as creators, we are riddled with self-doubt.

57:38Yeah. It's very hard for us to make those confident choices and we will change it constantly. And if that was - And we're all trying to figure out YouTube, but it's an ever-moving target. Well, now you guys know so many of the, you know, like the algorithm people, like you can just talk directly to Todd. I mean, we know you. We'll just go straight to the source, Neil. Again, you can just send the thumbnail options to product ideas out of this conversation. I'm going to take these back. We'll text you thumbnail options. Just straight from the CEO. Hey, actually go with this. You'll be our A-B test.

58:13We'll say, look, we all said this one's going to work. 學習資�료