Why every creator is making a show

9:24Colin Rosenblum:And is he saying, you can integrate into my videos or you can, with YouTube, buy advertising and make sure that it runs as my videos are coming out? He's saying both things.

9:40Samir Chaudry:He's saying both things. So they showed case studies of direct creator integrations into the content. They showed Dude Perfect with squad games. They showed examples of Dude Perfect with different brands and how they were actually in the videos. Plus, they talked about the new ad products of, you know, mid-roll, creator ads, takeovers, meaning media that's playing before creator videos with creators in them. So it was a very dynamic presentation that went, you know, here's a creator. Here's the show they're making. you can buy with us right now, here's the different products you can buy. So this is a big change for how YouTube engages with creators.

10:18Samir Chaudry:This public facing, we are here to package shows with you and take them to market together with select creators.

10:28Colin Rosenblum:It's very select creators. This is not a scaled operation where anyone who's uploading to YouTube can have that pitch to advertisers. Brandcast is a very specific moment with advertisers in the room.

10:40Samir Chaudry:I think the variance of the types of shows that were announced was really interesting to me. Trevor Noah announced a travel show and he was the host of Brandcast. And then you had Alex Cooper with the Unwell Network announcing about five unscripted reality shows. You had Dude Perfect announcing Squad Games. You had Kareem Rama, the creator of Subway Takes, announcing Keep the Meter Running. which was a very new show to announce. And so there was a lot of different shows. The two very significant moments that I thought were Dwayne Wade came out on stage with Jesser to talk about his new show and how it's like a pros versus Joes format.

11:24Samir Chaudry:And Dwayne Wade plugs his YouTube channel while he's on stage. Then you have Draymond Green come out with Dude Perfect and kind of on a side plugs his YouTube channel and plugs the Draymond Green show. And it had this feeling that everybody's making a show on YouTube right now. So I thought it was a very powerful broadcast. And I thought it drove a lot of clarity as to what YouTube is now. Can you recap the three forces? Yeah. The three forces at play. Number one is connected TV watch time. Meaning the audience behavior now is that people turn on YouTube on their TV. that is driving people to make shows that you can settle into.

12:10Samir Chaudry:Longer formats, repeatable, bingeable. Number two, financing is matching ambition. Yes. There's more sponsors in the space. There's more advertising in the space. And now there's a new model for select creators of going out to market and getting a sponsorship alongside or before you launch a show. And then number three is abundance of content, creating the need for marketing and packaging that's easy to remember. So you just, as a creator, I don't think right now you can just live in this kind of abyss of, you know, even you look at Casey Neistat coming back to vlogging right now. He's Casey Neistat.

12:53Samir Chaudry:He's like talent. He can do whatever he wants and people will still watch. but he doesn't, he can't be marketed in the way that all the creators of Brandcast were just marketed because he's not making a show. And there's just like a really simple distinction between videos and shows, which is just like branding, packaging, format, repeatability. So yeah, those are the three forces that I'm seeing.

13:19Colin Rosenblum:So this is a pretty major shift on YouTube. You know, we've been saying for a while, YouTube is the new TV, But by that, we really mean YouTube is taking away watch time from what has traditionally been TV. People are watching YouTube on their TVs. We're not necessarily saying that it is replacing fully the Hollywood model, the way content is distributed, the networks. But it's a pretty big deal for YouTube now to come out and say, hey, these are our shows. Yeah, this is our creator slate. That we in front of advertisers are saying is premium programming. right? But then these shows come out and they will do how they do.

14:00Yeah.

14:01Colin Rosenblum:Because it's YouTube. It's the numbers are not private. Right. And so it's a little bit of a different dynamic, I think. And it's something to watch this year is these shows that YouTube gets behind, how do they actually perform? And what does that mean for advertisers who are making the choice between YouTube and somewhere else?

14:21Samir Chaudry:I think the question is, though, we don't know how content performs across television or across streaming platforms. We don't know. You know, with Netflix picking up pods, and like we said before on the show, like pods that have historically done 30 ,000 views an episode on YouTube, like we don't know.

14:36Colin Rosenblum:But that works in its favor that audiences don't know. I'm saying that this, I think, could potentially work against YouTube creators,

14:45Samir Chaudry:potentially viewership is low.

14:48Colin Rosenblum:And I think a lot of people are taking this messaging of YouTube is TV and financing, shows and networks for YouTube. I mean, just last week, Cole Bennett launched his Lyrical Lemonade TV

14:59Samir Chaudry:with Lighthouse.

15:00Colin Rosenblum:With Lighthouse. And that's going to be numerous shows that are released on the same channel on YouTube, which again is something that historically does not really work. And it may work because maybe the moment has met YouTube and audiences at the right time.

15:16Samir Chaudry:Can I ask you a question?

15:17Colin Rosenblum:Yeah.

15:18Samir Chaudry:Are we in a post-view world?

15:20Colin Rosenblum:It's a valid question saying, does it even matter if something doesn't do well from a viewership perspective.

15:25Samir Chaudry:Like if it feels premium, if people enjoy it, if the right people like it, does it matter if it did 50 ,000 views, 200 ,000 views or a million views? And I know that's a crazy question, but the way things are marketed right now feels more important to me.

15:44Colin Rosenblum:I mean, TBPN would tell you that we're in a post view world for sure. Or that we're just in a niche world. That we're in a very niche world. Well, and that brand perception really matters. I mean, we were talking about TBPN yesterday. I was looking at their show on YouTube when it was live, and it had 250 viewers watching on YouTube, and it had 1 ,500 on X. And it sold for over$100 million to open AI.

16:08Samir Chaudry:Yeah, and more specifically, one of the shows that was promoted at Brandcast, our friend Kareem Rama, who's going to be on the show soon, Keep the Media Running. Amazing show. Loved it. Absolutely incredible. Two episodes are out right now. They are phenomenal. They are phenomenal. And by the way, Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg wrote about Keep the Minute Running, wrote about Brandcast and wrote that the show is excellent. It's not easy to get Lucas Shaw to say the show is excellent. It is an excellent show. The first episode has about 50 ,000 views in a week. I think that'll get to 100 ,000 views by next week and maybe eventually 200 ,000 views.

16:41Does that, what does that mean?

16:43Colin Rosenblum:Well, the second episode has maybe 10 to 15.

16:46Samir Chaudry:I think 20. 20 ,000 views. Right now.

16:48Colin Rosenblum:Yeah, so what does that mean? What does that mean? For YouTube to get up on stage and say, this is a show that we believe is good, that we're getting behind, and then people to look at it on YouTube in the days after and see viewership sub 100 ,000. I don't know.

17:04Samir Chaudry:I actually truly don't know the answer right now because I think it's good content. I think it's well marketed, and I think Kareem is a good creator for the space. Traditionally, what they've talked about is videos and creators who do in the 5, 10 million range. But even if we compare this to network television, like there's a lot of network television that does 100 ,000 views, right? Or even like business television. Like, I don't know, when I go on Squawk Box, I have no idea how many people are watching that live. Truly, no idea. No idea. It could be 10 ,000. It could be 2 ,000.

17:38Colin Rosenblum:It could be 50 ,000. It's probably at least 10 ,000 people on treadmills and equinoxes.

17:42Samir Chaudry:Let me tell you. It's gotta be. Do you know who texted me within a minute of getting off? Who? Your brother.

17:48Colin Rosenblum:Exactly. My brother was definitely on a treadmill at a gym.

17:52Samir Chaudry:He texted me immediately. Downtown Manhattan. My parents banker.

17:56Colin Rosenblum:Exactly.

17:57Samir Chaudry:Yeah. Those were the two texts I got immediately. Yeah. So I think that's, I really don't know the answer, but I think what we saw at Brandcast was like a move to marketing, a move to curation of YouTube. and my curiosity, unless you have something else on views. I do. I do. I have one more thing.

18:17Colin Rosenblum:I think the reason I kind of posed the question about views and bring it up is because when I saw YouTube get behind and continue to get behind Keep the Meter running, my first feeling after watching and loving the episode and seeing the viewership, which is not low, like this is a new show on a new channel. That is a lot of people to have 50 ,000. But relative to maybe some of the other shows that were announced at Brandcaster, talked about, my first thought was, man, this is a great show. Shouldn't I open up YouTube and shouldn't it take over the entire front page? Right.

18:50Samir Chaudry:Masthead, editorial promo, market it in the environment, not just outside of the environment.

18:56Colin Rosenblum:Yeah. And as I think about it now, I actually don't know how I feel about that because I think part of YouTube is that they shouldn't maybe do that. But I also think if you want to compete with Netflix and you believe you have good shows, you have to use your real estate to surface some of these shows.

19:14Samir Chaudry:I agree with that. So where I was going to go next was I was watching YouTube TV over the weekend and I wanted to, during a commercial break, go watch YouTube. And then I started thinking about YouTube premium, which I think is something we don't talk about enough, but like it's a massive subscription business for YouTube. There's premium, there's TV and there's YouTube. Those are two apps on Connect TV. My thought is this is all gonna become one. I think realistically we're gonna open up our TVs and there'll be a YouTube app that will have live programming that could be from cable networks or could not be if you pay for that package.

19:54Samir Chaudry:There's premium with no ads and then there's YouTube. And my guess is that premium, eventually, and maybe this is a hot take, we'll have original shows. So we're coming back to YouTube Red. YouTube Originals. YouTube Originals. I think we're coming. I mean, even the way that they're talking about our brand cast feels kind of YouTube Originals-y. Well, I think. I mean, we have to remember Good Mythical Morning came out of YouTube Originals, right?

20:23Colin Rosenblum:Or something from Mythical. What was it? So Stevie.

20:27Samir Chaudry:Oh, right. Was hired because. Was hired because of their creative director. Yeah.

20:31Colin Rosenblum:So it played a major part in Good Mythical Morning, having the infrastructure to be as consistent and as high quality as it's been. But yeah, no, I think you're probably right. Even to get down to the problem that I pose with marketing, like to launch Trevor Noah's travel show, but then just release it on YouTube without much marketing.

20:54Samir Chaudry:Right.

20:54Colin Rosenblum:What happens to it? He doesn't have historically a place for a show like that. He has a podcast on YouTube and he's very well known. But like, you know, again, he's kind of like thrown to the wolves sometimes when you launch a new show like that or a new channel. And so it requires a bit of marketing, which requires more of a Netflix style environment when you open up YouTube.

21:15Samir Chaudry:Now we're getting to algatorial, which was Daniel X phrase on our on our show of is it algorithmic? Is it editorial?

21:22Colin Rosenblum:Yeah.

21:23Samir Chaudry:Because we're getting blurred lines even with, not necessarily on the platform yet, but in the marketing of the shows.

21:30Colin Rosenblum:Exactly. That's what I'm saying. The marketing makes it feel like it's going to be more editorial, where we've put a stake in the ground and said, hey, this is one of our shows. You should watch it.

21:40Samir Chaudry:It's good. Yeah.

21:41Colin Rosenblum:But then the distribution is same old YouTube distribution, which is difficult sometimes. Yeah.

21:47Samir Chaudry:We'll see what happens.

21:48Colin Rosenblum:I'm curious to hear what you guys think. but at the same time maybe it's just actually like Hollywood where like look you get behind the shows

21:55Samir Chaudry:and if they work if people go to them they go to them

21:57Colin Rosenblum:exactly and if they're good they're good and I believe Keep the Meter Running is a great show it only has it only has two episodes out yeah five years from now if he's still making if Kareem is still making Keep the Meter Running and it's still on YouTube because the financing works I think it's going to be a massive show but Lucas Shaw also said that someone from HBO was next to him and was like this should be on HBO.

22:20Samir Chaudry:The question is, how does YouTube keep it on YouTube?

22:22Colin Rosenblum:Exactly.

22:23Samir Chaudry:And that's going to come into play over the next year.

22:26Colin Rosenblum:If YouTube decides they want to pay to keep it on YouTube, then they got to market it to make sure it does better and find more people. Exactly.

22:34Samir Chaudry:Yeah, or package it well and sell it to someone.

22:36Colin Rosenblum:Yeah, sell it to a brand.

22:37Samir Chaudry:Okay, I want to transition to talk about IO. We're here at Google IO in Mountain View. We just saw the keynote. This is our first time at IO. We came here in partnership with Gemini. a lot of updates. And actually the day started out with some updates to YouTube. We should just talk quickly about the update to YouTube search. Yeah.

22:56Colin Rosenblum:So the update there is that you can now conversationally ask YouTube what you're looking for. So the example they give is, you know, a dad says, Hey, I want to teach my kid how to ride a bike. She already knows how to balance. That's the prompt that is searched on YouTube. And then And YouTube comes back with a series of videos with exact step-by-step moments where you can drop in to learn the things you need. So it comes back with four videos that start at different points that you click into. You're sort of following a journey of education via different YouTube videos. That's pretty dramatically different from search, give me a thumbnail.

23:34Colin Rosenblum:I have to choose based on the thumbnails where I want to click into. It's more of an efficient way to get you the information.

23:40Samir Chaudry:Yeah, that's very, it's very, I would say that the two things that I noticed in the keynote today is utility, like the internet becoming more efficient and more utilitarian, and then more personalized. And I think this is a bit of like personalization, right? Like I just need this moment from the video. Everything that was talked about on stage today at I.O. is about personalization. And I find that to be a really interesting future of the internet that actually plays in a fascinating way with what we saw with YouTube. What happened with YouTube and Brandcast is like, hey, maybe there's too much content and it's like you can go back down too many rabbit holes.

24:19Samir Chaudry:So let us just put a stake in the ground on which ones are our shows. And then over here, what we saw at IO was like, the internet is your canvas. You can do whatever you want. Now, like there was a demo where you search something in Google. This was insane. And it comes back with a custom app based on your search. So the example was like someone searching about like, how does a black hole work? And it came back with an interactive like interface where you can play around. It teaches you how it works. And then you're sliding things to see how it works and learning with an interactive app.

24:53Colin Rosenblum:There was another one that was a meal tracker, essentially, where you're trying to track your meals for your diet and schedule your workouts. And it was a custom app after you searched that you could then use to do this, which is pretty incredible. Yeah, completely insane.

25:08Samir Chaudry:Yeah. I think the best update for me that I found to be like something I'm going to use immediately is through Gemini Spark, which is like the agents that work in the background. And I have this task called Daily Brief, which essentially works within your Google Docs, your Gmail, your calendar. And spits out like, here's what's going on in the day for you. Here's your priorities. Here's what you need to do. What I find is creators, especially us, we have a lot going on. We're not the most organized people. That to me felt like a really interesting personalized use of the internet that I am excited about.

25:47Colin Rosenblum:Yeah. Some of those announcements were specifically very helpful for us because you and I have worked within the Google suite basically since the beginning. so i have files on top of files on top of google docs on top of slides on top of yeah i think spreadsheets like my yeah i i need i i need like conversational help

26:07Samir Chaudry:with just looking through my stuff yeah the other thing i thought was really interesting through spark was the ability to create a skill so actually like we can upload what's cool is like we have a bunch of guidelines of how we create stuff we have rules of how we create stuff we can upload those into Gemini and have like skill. So we can say, Hey, I need to make a deck for this

26:30Colin Rosenblum:purpose. Or I need to write a script for this video. Exactly.

26:33Samir Chaudry:And it will do it in the style that you want to do it.

26:36Colin Rosenblum:Yeah. Use Colin and Samir's video skill.

26:38Samir Chaudry:Exactly. And we'll have

26:39Colin Rosenblum:written that out. We'll have given it the rules and guidelines and it can edit based on that.

26:44Samir Chaudry:We have this two column script that we use, which is, uh, here's what's being said and here's what's shown. So like, here's, here's verbal and here's visual. And so we can use that now and go like, here's our template, just fill this out.

26:57Colin Rosenblum:And then another one of the major announcements was Omni, which is conversational video editing. And I've used Google Flow before in the past. Even right now, we're working on a car commercial and I'm working through the edit and there were certain shots that I needed of the car that has placeholders for shots that we needed to get. There was this cool shot of like a map moving from one location to another. And as I'm in the edit, I use Google Flow to get those shots and then drop them in. This brings a lot of those capabilities, but just to Gemini. So conversational video editing. You can also now start with a video of your own.

27:37Colin Rosenblum:So they showed a demo where a guy is filming himself POV style.

27:41Samir Chaudry:He goes up to a mirror. So it was Demis. Yeah, Demis. The head of Google DeepMind, but yeah. He's also just a guy. Yeah, or a guy. Yeah, fair.

27:54Colin Rosenblum:Goes up, clicks on the mirror with his finger, uploads that video, and then says, keep everything exactly the same. Just change and make this one thing happen when he touches the glass.

28:06Samir Chaudry:I will say you showed me an edit last week that had a bunch of temp video in it that was from Flow.

28:14Colin Rosenblum:Yeah. And I had no idea, which is actually insane. Yeah. That's pretty insane.

28:20Samir Chaudry:that that's the case. I'm going to say the craziest thing we've done so far today. Insane because I'm one hell of a prompter. Yeah. I just, I was, I was, you turned to me at one point and you were like, you know, those aren't our shots, right? You know, I'm not even in this room right now. The most insane thing was the live translation with the Google smart glasses,

28:39Colin Rosenblum:which we just did. We just did that.

28:41Samir Chaudry:So we were wearing smart glasses and they have us walk up to this woman who then speaks Korean, but it reads out in English from the display inside the glasses. That, to me, was one of the craziest things I've experienced.

28:54Colin Rosenblum:I don't know if you felt this way, but I really wanted to continue the conversation. Yeah, they made us move really fast. But they were like, that's all you got. But I got stuff to say now. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience because she's speaking Korean and then we're engaging. And they were like, yeah, you've had enough.

29:06Samir Chaudry:So I assume that we were speaking in English and her glasses were translating to Korean. I think that's what was happening. That was crazy. I don't know. That's insane. So, okay. It just feels like, I found this to be really interesting because this week has been pinned by two, you know, Alphabet events. One being YouTube Brandcast, one being Google I.O.

29:26Colin Rosenblum:I haven't thought about the fact that the company is called Alphabet in a long time.

29:29Samir Chaudry:You took me by surprise. I was like, what are we talking about? But they felt like they tell two stories of the future of the internet. Yeah. One being the premium curated, dictated by the platform, right? Like here, here's the shows that we think matter editorially. And then the other, which is personalized.

29:50Colin Rosenblum:There was a slide in this presentation today at IO that said, do anything.

29:55Samir Chaudry:Yeah. That was the message though. It was like literally do anything.

29:59Colin Rosenblum:You can do anything.

30:01Samir Chaudry:Yeah. Which, which we haven't had the time yet, but I just, I kind of want to just play for a bit and play around with like building custom apps. There was one that was like a date planner, which I was like, oh, I saw you really perk up. Yeah. I was like, that's good. I want to do that where you can like organize a, you know, a date night because I think that's just something I need help with. Sure. But yeah, there's also a bit of overwhelm, I would say. There's a slight overwhelm of like the possibilities are absolutely endless.

30:29Colin Rosenblum:Yeah. I found myself a bit overwhelmed. I was excited to sit down, take three hours and explore all these new announcements. But I was like waiting for myself to have one thing I knew I wanted to do. but it's hard when you can do anything. Yeah.

30:45Samir Chaudry:And I think the reason why that matters so much, especially as video creators, is this is the environment now we are competing in for attention. Like I am feeling excited to get on my computer and build things. That is a creative act and it is entertainment. That is time on the internet that I will spend doing that, which then again plays with the first thing, which is you kind of got to tell me when I have the time and I turn on my TV, what am I supposed to watch? Yeah. Those two things. Cause I have less time than ever. Cause I have less time than ever. And if I don't know what to watch on YouTube, I'm going to go have some fun over here and build something, build a custom app, go to an interactive.

31:27Samir Chaudry:That was the interactive like map that you could play with that. Like you can ask a question and it will teach you. Gemini will teach you with this interactive graphic that you can poke around.

31:39Colin Rosenblum:I was like, dude, what are textbooks for?

31:42Samir Chaudry:Yeah, this is crazy. So you could like learn anything and build anything. And so I think there's some writing I want to do around this, but I feel like these two announcements or these two events have told the story of the future of the internet in a really compelling way. So that's what we wanted to share with you guys. I think we're about to get kicked out of this room here at IO.

32:02Colin Rosenblum:We're 10 minutes over?

32:03Samir Chaudry:It's over. So we got to go.

32:04Colin Rosenblum:Okay. Okay. What about it?

32:06Samir Chaudry:Okay. Wrap up.

32:07Colin Rosenblum:We don't have any time.

32:08Samir Chaudry:We don't have any time. All right. Well, here's what I'll say from a wrap up.

32:11Colin Rosenblum:Take the transcript. Put it in Gemini. Next week, press publish LA.

32:15Samir Chaudry:We haven't talked about it much, mainly because we sold out. And we sold out very fast. And I don't know what to do because there's 250 applications and we're going to have to turn them all down. So if you applied and you didn't get in this time, we will do more events. But thank you to everyone who's coming. I truly can't wait We will be summarizing all of what happens on stage with google gemini. There will be videos. There will be photos We will tell you guys all about the event. Seriously. Thank you to everyone who's coming out there It's gonna be great. It's gonna be awesome All right. Thanks for listening to this episode of the colin sphere show.

32:51Samir Chaudry:We'll see you next week