CEO of the Year Neal Mohan Discusses YouTube’s Cultural Dominance

Thank you. Thank you. It's really an honor. So, thank you very much.

Oh my goodness. You know, I don't know. I don't know. You tell me. You've been following.

You know, I read what everybody else in this room reads on a regular basis. So there's nothing that I know or really anything that I think I can add to the discourse that's out there. And by the way, anything I say now might be outdated five minutes from now. So, leave it at that.

You know, this is going to sound very, very clichéd. When we go to work at YouTube and you walk the halls of YouTube, we don't really think in terms of who the other streaming platforms are or the other feed platforms are. We really think, and hopefully the tables that I'm at today are a reflection of this, you will hear the term creator or creative person a hundred times a day in every single one of our meetings. And that's really the only thing that we think about, because our job is to not program the streaming service that we deliver. Our job is to actually build the stage on which the amazing creators and programmers do what they do every single day. And most of the people that work for me are technologists, because our job is to connect those amazing creative people with their audiences no matter where they are in the world. And that's really what we think about versus what's this competitor doing versus what this other competitor is doing.

You know, I think YouTube, if I were predicting something, I would say that YouTube in its essence is going to continue to look a lot like it does today in the following sense. As you pointed out, every day two billion plus people all over the world come to YouTube to connect with their favorite creators, creative person, content, sports, movies, music, you name it. And in its essence, that's what YouTube is going to continue to be. Now, how it's consumed, how that content is getting created, that is going to be transformed by technology, which we can talk about, but that connectivity, the magic of YouTube, which is this open platform where if you have an idea, you're a creative person, nobody gets to tell you that you don't look the right way, you're the wrong gender, you're from the wrong part of the world. If you have something amazing to share, you can come on to YouTube and do that. And that won't change.

You know, it's a few things, but in its essence, it is the way I would describe it, and the way it really becomes tangible for me is: it's the place where the cultural zeitgeist is set every single day. Regardless of where you are in the world, if you're a young person opening up your phone, whatever country that you're in, you're opening up to the cutting edge of culture. And that's what our artists, our musicians, our creators, our media partners are doing on YouTube every single day. And the creative canvas that they use to do that is what I think is ultimately truly profound about YouTube, which is if you have a story to tell, you can do it in a 15-second Short or a 15-minute sort of long-form video—which was the original short form 20 years ago when you talked about 2006—to a 15-hour live stream, and everything in between. And so that's in essence what YouTube is, and that's how I make sense of the 20 billion videos that are on our platform or the hundreds of hours of content uploaded every minute.

The answer—and you can ask any of them sitting in the audience because they've heard this from me many, many times—the answer is no. And the reason is because what all of them tell me, and I don't think they're saying it because they're talking to the CEO of YouTube, I think they really believe it—they tell me that YouTube is their home. And so from my standpoint, as long as they recognize that aspect of it, then everything else that happens off of YouTube, whether it's a streaming deal with a particular streamer or selling chocolates or a particular pair of shoes that is derived from their success on YouTube—and these creators aren't just incredibly creative people, they're incredible entrepreneurs, too—and they recognize that. The example I often cite is our biggest creator, Mr. Beast. You go to his office, the first rule in his office is 'YouTube First.' There would be no Beast Games if there wasn't Mr. Beast on YouTube. And I think creators sort of really viscerally understand that. So their success off of YouTube, I think, just empowers them more and actually ultimately accrues to the success of their channels on YouTube.

Well, I think you'd have to ask them. And what I would say there is it's sort of a two-way street. You know, if you ask a young person today—and I know everybody in this room has young people in their lives—chances are that the top five people that they name, if you ask them who sets the culture for you, who do you think about, who gets you excited, five out of ten of them are probably going to be YouTubers in some way. And so, and today over 50% of the consumption of YouTube in the US happens on television screens. So if you're a young person, when you turn on the TV, you're turning on YouTube. And so that's the reason why our creators tell us that they want to be recognized for that amazing work. They are, again, as I said, they're breaking through in terms of new formats, new types of creativity. And so, a creator that I work with, Kenny Dion, she says, 'I studied hard. I worked my butt off. I want the A.' And that's the recognition that they're looking for.

You know, personally, and obviously I spend a lot of time down there and I spend time with our partners down there. I think if you'd asked me this question ten years ago, I think there would be a lot of sort of question marks or raised eyebrows, like 'What is this UGC content? What is this raccoons high-fiving kind of thing?' And I think you fast-forward to today, and I don't think that question ever comes up anymore. Some of the biggest creators on our platform are our media company partners. Everybody talks about them and all the headlines this year have been around the negotiations between YouTube, around YouTube TV and carriage deals or what have you. But what gets lost is that some of those media partners operate dozens, if not hundreds, of channels on YouTube. They are some of the biggest creators on YouTube. They lean into it. They tell their stories. They have incredible IP and an enormous amount of the fandom around their properties happens on YouTube. And they know it. They tell me that all the time.

You know, what I would say about that is, well, first of all, it is going towards this public trust. And the way I think about it is I say two things which I have shared with my team—a number of them are here. Our job is to continue to deliver on that fundamental promise of YouTube. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. I think things that get in the way of that mission can be distractions. They can take away from us actually focusing on what that goal is. And so, finding a way to contribute it to ultimately what I hope is a good cause and putting it behind us is really the best way that we could have addressed that. And that's what we did. And it allows us to focus on everything else that we just had this conversation about, which is the success of our creators. What does the future of media look like? How do we make YouTube the best learning platform for young people in the world? And that's been our approach.

We didn't say exactly what you said.

Look, what I'll tell you, Sam, is we're a platform of, as I said, billions of people come to our platform. We have millions of people posting content on the platform every single day. And so naturally we are an important part of the civic discourse, the public discourse that happens. I say to my teams all the time, what happens in the world happens on YouTube and vice versa. And I recognize that responsibility. And by the way, you're talking in the context of DC, this happens all over the world. And so do we work with administrations and governments? Of course we work with administrations and governments, whether it's the Biden administration, the Trump administration, whether it's governments in Asia, Latin America, etc. And I view that as a core part of our responsibility. Governments care about the impact on their citizens and societies, and I recognize that YouTube plays a really big part of that. And the core thing that I think is my responsibility is to live up to that original promise, which is it is an open platform. It's a platform for freedom of expression. That's where the magic of YouTube comes from. But that means that you're going to have a place where there are millions and millions of different opinions and voices, including many that many people in this room may disagree with. But that's the power of YouTube, and that's what we have to keep living up to. And so that is the fundamental principle and really the rules of the road in terms of how we engage with governments, whether they're in DC or in Sacramento or any of our states or any country around the world.

I mean, look, I talked about responsibility. I think the area where I feel like we have the paramount responsibility is to young people. You know, my wife Haemon and I have three kids in our home. So I experience this directly every single day as a parent. We were the first platform to build a dedicated standalone kids app ten years ago called YouTube Kids. And I think we're maybe one of the only people who still does that. But we recognize that kids will graduate from that and they'll want to be on YouTube. There's an enormous amount of good things that happen on YouTube. Kids learn everything from algebra to fix the tires on their dirt bike every single day, millions and millions of times a day. It's also a place where they connect with their favorite artists, but also with each other, and we see that value. Having said that, the way I think about it—and as a parent, but also as the CEO of YouTube—is the best thing we can do is actually to give controls to families in terms of how they manage that. My wife and I try to limit the time of our kids on services like YouTube. Just like other services, we have different rules for the weekend versus the weekday. And I think the best thing we can do from a product standpoint is to actually make it easy for all parents, from just a pure human understandable standpoint, to actually manage that on behalf of their children in a way that is suitable to their household, because every parent I also think is going to make different decisions and they have that right. And so that's what we work on. That's our approach. That's how we talk about YouTube with our regulatory stakeholders, and that's the way that our roadmap is oriented. And it is a top priority and we dedicate a lot of resources. In fact, just so you know, I flew out here yesterday. The meeting that I had before I came out was really around continuing to build those capabilities on behalf of parents and families.

Most powerful creator on YouTube. I mean, we have—I think what I'd say is: I think the most powerful creator on YouTube is a creator who's getting started today. And the reason I say that is because that creator has infinite possibilities before him or herself. And that power derives from what YouTube is. So that creator today, a year from now, could be a creator with 50 million subscribers doing something completely different that no creator has thought of or invented today. And so that's really the way that I would think about it. We live to serve the amazing creators that are in this room who are already enormously successful, but in some ways just as importantly, we are serving that creator who decided to upload and hit that upload button earlier this evening for the very first time.

What is the last thing I watched on YouTube? Let's see. Well, I did watch the Time channel on YouTube earlier today. Yeah.

That channel could be a lot bigger.

They're all very, very tough.

Oh, well, I'll say a couple things about that. The first thing I'll say is—and this is not directly answering your question—but I feel like, you know, my job as the CEO of YouTube is actually more like the mayor of a town called YouTube. And the amazing people on YouTube are not the CEO of YouTube, but all the amazing creators and artists and the like that make YouTube what it is every single day. And so shout-out to all of them for what they do every single day. But since you asked me, there's a person at that table who is truly the Person of the Year for me, and I'd be remiss if I didn't call out my rock and my wife Ha, who is really the person.