Creator Coup: CEO Neal Mohan on YouTube Beating Netflix Without Buying a Single Show

Nice to see you, Janice. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. Yay.

Look, my reaction to it is, as you and I were just talking about, we're in the business of our creators. Our only job is to give them a voice, make them successful. It's literally written into our mission statement. So I spend very little time thinking about those types of quotes and all of my time focused on what's going to make our creators successful. You come to YouTube. We all come to YouTube not because it's this amazing platform—which of course, I'm biased, I think it is—but because of these amazing creators and artists and musicians and all kinds of thought leaders. And that's who you go to engage with. And who am I to say what's spending time, engaging time, quality time, killing time? I think that's frankly just the industry talking to itself. It's all of us as consumers, the two billion people that come to YouTube every single day, who get to decide how to spend our time. And increasingly more and more of them are spending it with the amazing creators on YouTube.

Yeah. The first thing I meant by that quote is again, it's not my job to determine what people consider to be TV. It's not any of my partners' or competitors' jobs to do that. It's all of us as consumers. Consumers are actually voting with their watch time, with their engagement. And that's really what I meant, which is if you're a person, especially if you're a young person, your expectation is that when you turn on the TV, the reason why you're turning on YouTube is because it's the place where you get everything that you're looking for—from a 15-minute VOD with your favorite YouTuber to that three-hour NFL game to a 15-hour live stream to a 30-second short, all in one place. And by the way, it's not just the old world where all of that content is just talking at you. You can participate. That fandom that exists on YouTube is not just in service of all of that amazing content, but it is culture-setting in its own right. So the fact that YouTube is the epicenter of culture because of our creators is really what I meant by YouTube being the new TV.

The way I view it is it really comes back to the fact that YouTube is the epicenter of culture. It's not just this amazing creator content—you mentioned some great examples with Miss Rachel—but it's all the fandom and all the engagement that happens around it. And I think other platforms are taking notice of that. How do I feel about it? I think it's fantastic because these creators, every time they speak to me, they tell me that YouTube is their home base. They understand that all of that success they're getting off of YouTube derives from this incredible audience and this authentic connection to their community that they've built on YouTube. You go to MrBeast's, Jimmy Donaldson's, offices in North Carolina, he's got kind of his five rules of success. His number one rule is YouTube first. So no matter what he does, the place where he will invest the most of his creativity, his time, and his resources is in the success of his YouTube channel and the videos. And every month they get bigger and bigger and more spectacular because he recognizes that that's not only good for him on YouTube, but also provides all of these other opportunities that are ancillary to what he's doing on YouTube. And so back to the point of YouTube being the epicenter of culture, if we're the place where other services and platforms are getting their cultural ideas, I think that's great for those creators, but also great for the YouTube ecosystem.

I just think fundamentally what's missing is that the world has changed. And what I mean by that is consumers have changed in terms of their expectation and what they want to do with their time. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. And it's a very simple statement. It sounds very simple, but in my mind it's very profound and it's the reason it's our 20th anniversary this year, but it's a mission statement that's held us in good stead for a couple of decades. And it means precisely that no one can tell you that you look the wrong way or you sound the wrong way or you're the wrong gender or you're from the wrong part of the world when you upload that video to YouTube. And that is the profound aspect of YouTube. When we say it's an open platform, a platform that stands for freedom of expression and freedom of speech, that's what I mean. And that is turning up on its head the way that a lot of the industry worked. And I would argue for the better. It's a reason why there's two billion people that come every day. There's a reason why there's tens of millions of creators on our platform, because nobody turned them away when they first had that amazing creative idea and posted it on their YouTube channel.

Look, I think it's what I said. These creators, Miss Rachel included, and all of her peers, really do view YouTube as their home base. And so if it results in projects and other types of opportunities elsewhere, I think it's great for them. I think it leads to more investment in terms of the success of their channels on YouTube. And one thing that's very important, and you kind of alluded to this in your question about Rachel, is on YouTube the model is very different than it is on other streaming services, obviously studios, because we don't own the content, right? The creator owns the content. So when Miss Rachel uploads that video to YouTube, not only can she continue to benefit for years in terms of its revenue growth because of our revenue share program, but if she decides to do something different with that video, she can do that whenever she wants. And so the analogy that I like to use when it comes to creators is your channel is like a library. You're basically building up this library around your creativity, around your vision, and it should be more valuable to you 10 years from now than it is today because you always get to continue to own the content as opposed to licensing it off or selling it off to a studio, which is the way the traditional underwriting model exists.

Yeah. It's a great question. I saw that number too. It's amazing. It's a testament to all the work across YouTube, but all of you and everybody really involved in the industry. And it's amazing to see how far it's come. One thing that I've just observed even in the few hours that I've been on the ground here since yesterday is the presence of YouTubers and creators in general just everywhere. You have more than a dozen here that you brought, but there are literally hundreds, well over hundreds, and lots of them working with YouTube, working with other platforms. And it really goes back to the origins of Cannes Lions, this festival of creativity, and who stands for that more than these amazing YouTubers and creators. But on your question, Janice, in terms of brands and how they should be thinking about this, my message is very simple and hopefully consistent. It's what I shared at Brandcast in New York last month, which is first and foremost you really have to put yourself as a brand in the shoes of these creators. Like you really literally have to think as a creator first and foremost above and beyond everything else, and all the other tactics will stem from that. And what I mean is, practically speaking, it literally means having a presence on YouTube, which of course every brand does today, but then thinking about your audience as a creator would think about their audience—this is my audience. How am I authentic with my voice, my brand? What does it stand for to connect with that audience? Not just in service of products and services I have this month or this year, but over the long run. And that's where collabs come from. That's where other partnerships come from. That's where your paid media can amplify what you're doing on your channel. And so that's really the core of what my message is going to be this week.

Yeah. I see this—so that's true. I think you're right. I do think creators, particularly the larger creators, want a more strategic conversation with brands, more around alignment of vision, because first and foremost, what creators, all creators, but particularly the ones that have had enormous success on YouTube, really care about above and beyond everything else is their audience and that connection that they've built with that audience. And the savvy ones will never take it for granted. They never want that to get burned. And so to the extent that they work with brands, it has to be done in a way where it is a deep sort of meeting of the minds as opposed to something that's fly-by-night. And that's what I meant also when I said earlier that brands have to think as creators, because if they're in that mindset, they also don't want that sort of random mix and match in your feed—one gone here one week, gone the next. That is not the way to success. And so yes, and I think that results in content, but it results also in deeper types of integrations. It results in off-YouTube partnerships as well. And so that's really important, and the way that a brand is successful there is thinking like a creator.

What I'll say, and actually I'll point back to where this conversation started. You mentioned our leadership position in streaming on televisions, and I don't view YouTube as a social media platform. We're not social media. We're not sort of traditional television. We're really in our own lane. And as a result of it, the way I think about YouTube is it's a creator platform. The content on YouTube is creator-led, creator-produced content. We are very proud of the fact—I'm very proud of the fact—that we are the world's original and largest creator economy. We intend to remain that way. And when YouTube started 20 years ago, that term creator was meaningless. It didn't mean anything. Like when that Me at the Zoo video was uploaded, and you fast-forward to today, creators are a worthwhile profession and pursuit by young people all over the world. And that's a testament to what YouTube stands for. We've paid out over $70 billion to the creator economy over the last three years. The last time we measured that, that number continues to grow. Hopefully will continue to grow. And the way that I think about it from a brand standpoint is that by investing in YouTube, you're really participating in that ecosystem, but you have to do it by being a creator first and really doubling down. And it's a global ecosystem, right? So think about it that way and think about it over the long term. It really is not just about what you're thinking about in this year's Upfronts or in this year's scatter markets or what have you. It's a multi-year, slow-burn type investment, and the brands that do that are the ones that see the results.

Yeah. And as Janice, you may know, before I've been at YouTube a very long time, but before that I used to run Google's display and video ads business. So my multi-decade career really has been in the media and the advertising space. So it's personally important to me to generate those results on behalf of brands. And that's a primary focus not just of me but my teams across YouTube. Many of you here will spend time with our YouTube and Google teams. And that's our job. That's what we're looking to do. And ultimately it comes down to one very simple thing: is YouTube meeting what that brand's objective is? I gave you a bunch of sort of advice and tactics—brands thinking about creators, etc.—all of that holds and that's foundational. But we have to generate results. An example I was just talking with someone about earlier is L'Oréal's new campaign around Urban Decay—they worked with a couple of creators, back to your point about deep engagement with those creators, and it was very creative content, very authentic, creator-forward. But it also resulted in something on the order of north of 250% search lift, search uplift. So it's got to translate into real metrics and real results for the brands. That was a great example of that happening. Sephora did their sort of holiday picking campaign, again going deeper with a handful of YouTube Shorts creators, nearly 100% search uplift there too. So it's got to tie back to ROI, and that is what the singular focus of the YouTube teams and our Google teams is, to drive that on behalf of brands every single day.