YouTube CEO — 4 Big Priorities for 2026

It's something that's been going on now for, I'd say, eight or nine years. And it's really a way for us to be very transparent with our entire ecosystem, of course, our creators and viewers, partners, and share what we think are the priorities for the upcoming year, some of the big trends that we're seeing. And the reception over the years has been so positive about it that we continue it every year and super excited to talk about a new one today.

One of the things, as you know, Renee, really well, is that we all as viewers, as fans, come to YouTube for these incredible cultural moments and really for the cultural zeitgeist, whether it's the Super Bowl, whether it's the Oscars, whether it's a new album drop. And increasingly, certainly over the last several years, creators really are at that epicenter of culture. They're building out their own studios, studio-sized lots in Hollywood. They have enormous fandoms all over the world and that is really our mission is to build up their businesses, build up their audiences and I'm incredibly excited about what our creators have in store in 2026.

We really do give this very broad canvas to our creators to be able to express themselves, share what they want with their audiences. So for example, Shorts is 200 billion views a day. That continues to be an incredibly fast growing format on YouTube and it's an area that you'll see further investment from us on in 2026. The living room continues to be an area of strength and investment for us. We're coming up on three years where we're the number one streamer here in the US. So in order to continue to maintain that position, we're going to invest in the product. So being able to, for example, on YouTube TV choose exactly the multi-view channels that you want or bringing more consumer choice. So multiple tiers within YouTube TV. So expect that. And then of course one of the core parts of YouTube is music and investing in music including the YouTube Music app, but also fan experience on the main app. So things like being able to discover new artists, learn more about the song that you're listening to.

We know that YouTube, from the really early days, has been a place where families and young people come to learn new things, to get exposed to new forms of creativity. Our approach always has been to bring those magical experiences of YouTube to young people, but to do it in a way where kids and teens remain safe on the platform. And we have a long track record of doing that here over the years. And 2026 is going to be no different. One of the areas that we've been investing in quite a bit is giving parents the controls that they're looking for and to be able to do that in a way that is simple and easy to use. We believe at YouTube that parents should be in control. They should be the ones that make decisions on behalf of their children, teenagers. So to make those controls sort of front and center and easy to use is going to be a big priority for us.

Yeah. And creators always give great feedback about what should be coming next. So we're very excited about that. We are the world's original and largest creator economy. We intend to remain that way. I'm incredibly proud of the fact that over the last four years, we've paid out over hundred billion dollars to creators, artists, media companies, and other partners. That is a core part of what we do here at YouTube to make it so that creators who depend on us for a living that we take that responsibility incredibly seriously and we continue to deliver. Shopping is a big priority to make it so that YouTube is the best place for viewers and shoppers to find the products and services that they love through the creators that they love and trust. The second is brand deals. Increasingly, that's a more and more important part of a creator's monetization portfolio. So creating tools that make it easier for brands and agencies to be able to find the creators that are going to grow their businesses and also creating a portfolio of tools for creators, the ability to easily add a link to Shorts, for example, to drive to a product or service. And then another one that I'm very excited about that I know creators are very excited about, which is being able to dynamically swap out the creative, the sponsor creative that they had been working with in their videos for another one, and to make that entire process dynamic.

Well, Renee, as you know, AI plays a really big role in terms of YouTube being able to deliver for our creators as well as viewers. On the creation side and creator side, we've been investing very heavily for the last couple of years now. And the goal there is very simple, which is to really use AI to empower the amazing human creativity that happens on YouTube every single day. So, we've rolled out a slew of tools around creation of Shorts content in YouTube Create and other parts of YouTube to do just that. And I'm really heartened by how much adoption there's been around it. In December, for example, over a million creators used our AI tools to produce content on YouTube every single day. So, expect more along the lines of being able to use your likeness, for example, in the creation of Shorts or being able to generate a game in YouTube Playables from a single text prompt. So ideas like that I'm very excited about. Increasingly, AI is playing an important part about how viewers interact with their favorite creators on YouTube as well. One of my favorite features is the ask button. In December, 20 million viewers used Ask to learn more about the video that they were watching. And then the final area, which I've talked a lot about over the last couple years, which I feel very passionate about, which is giving access to the amazing content that's on YouTube to more people all over the world. And there AI has played a really big role through features like auto-dubbing. So in December, for example, 6 million viewers watched a video for over 10 minutes that wasn't in their native language. And so that accessibility growing it, which is a boon to viewers, but also of course to creators, is powered by AI.

I think that is a concern that I hear from creators and it's also something that we have been investing in for a couple years now. I've talked about this capability called likeness detection and the idea there is really building on our long track record of content ID being able to give that type of control directly to the people who own that likeness, whether it's their face or their voice.

These tools are amazing as we've talked about. I think they're going to unleash an enormous amount of creativity, but they can also be used by bad actors. And so there our approach is really a three-pronged approach. First is we are going to continue to lean into transparency. Any content whether it's produced using AI tools or not is subject to our community guidelines including guidelines around deception and fake content. So that will continue and it's up to us to continue to enforce that at scale. We have a track record of doing that. We're going to continue to do that, continue to invest in that area. And then also focus on the proliferation of low-quality content, you know, what some people refer to as AI slop. And there we want to make sure that our recommendation systems can deal with it. And we're going to treat it based on our track record of being able to do that around things like clickbait, low-quality, repetitive content. You should expect to see a lot more investment from YouTube building on what we've been doing over the last couple of years going into 2026.

Oh, wow. You know, one of the most amazing parts of YouTube is getting to work with the incredible creators that are on our platform. Every day I'm in awe of their creativity, their entrepreneurship, how they connect with their fans. But in terms of who the most important creator is a few years down the road, I think for me the answer to that is actually pretty straightforward, which is it's probably a creator that none of us have heard of. It might be a creator that's getting started right now today. And who knows the type of content that they are going to create, the type of creativity that they're going to bring to the table. And they may be the world's biggest, most important creator a few years down the road. And that in a sense is the magic of YouTube. That's what makes YouTube such an amazing place to have the privilege to work at, which is we get to build this incredible stage. And who knows who's going to be on that stage that's going to captivate all of us just a few years down the road.

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