Welcome to Big Signals from Semaphore Media. I'm Max Tonyie, media editor here at Semaphore. And with me as always is my boss, our editor-in-chief, Ben Smith.
Hey, Max. This week on the show, I know we're both really excited. We're going to be talking to the guy who is running the most popular streaming service in the world, and that's YouTube CEO, Neal Mohan. We're going to talk to him about YouTube's huge podcast viewership growth, the FCC's kind of scary recent threats to investigate the platform, and if YouTube has changed its mind about how it polices its own content.
Yeah, he's got an enormous amount on his plate, enormous amount of power in this media moment.
Well, we'll dig into all of that right after the break.
So, Ben, usually at this point in the show, you know, we have a bit of a windup about who this week's guest is in case people don't really know who they are and why we're interviewing them. I don't really think that we have to explain to anybody what YouTube is.
Yeah. I mean, YouTube at this point is kind of the water in which the media industry swims. Arguably, I think the most important media company, certainly the most important platform in the world. I don't know if you remember when Chris Balfe was on a few weeks ago, founder of a company called Red Seat Ventures that Fox just bought. I think we asked him what the biggest surprise of the year was and to him it was that there had not been a real challenge to YouTube's just unquestioned dominance. It's pretty remarkable.
Yeah. You know, there have been some small challengers in different lanes, right? Like YouTube has to compete for creators' time and efforts with places like Instagram and TikTok. Spotify is kind of trying to push some of its creators into uploading video podcasts. Kind of works, kind of doesn't. But nobody is challenging YouTube as a whole, full stop.
I kind of think our audience is still pretty audio though, right? People should tell us.
Ben, but I feel like sometimes, perhaps today we will change locations and outfits stealthily and I never get any email about that, which makes me feel like we're still safely audio first. But I don't know, Ben. I think people want to see our different outfit changes and my different fits. I think that's something that some people are demanding.
So you're getting the email.
All right. Fair enough. Exactly. Well, I know we're super excited. We recorded this interview a little bit earlier. Why don't we just jump right into it?
Thank you so much for joining us, Neal.
Yeah, Neal, thank you so much for coming on.
It's great to see you guys. Thanks for having me.
So, one of YouTube's main advantages or maybe the central fact about YouTube right now is just the absolute scale. There's just nothing like it in the world. And you guys announced this statistic a couple of weeks ago. I think Max broke the story actually that a billion people consumed some piece of podcast content on YouTube. And I guess I wonder, when you see these big digital media numbers you always wonder what does that mean? I assume it means that like 1 billion people will watch this interview. But if it doesn't mean that, can you just tell us a little bit about that? Like, what does that mean?
Yeah. I mean, I think what I would just say about that is, Ben, you and I have talked about this in the past, we view ourselves as kind of in our own lane. We're a video sharing and watching platform, but the term video really means video and audio first and foremost. When we first started working with podcasters and thinking about podcast content, going back before COVID even, it was primarily about audio. Video and audio sort of work the same way in terms of consumption and sharing. We wanted to cater to people who listen to non-music content, and that's where our investment and start with podcast kind of happened. But very early on we made two or three bets that I think in retrospect were pretty significant. First, because we're YouTube, we bet on the fact that video podcasts would be a thing. People would want to not just listen to a conversation but also see who's having that conversation and feel part of it. COVID accelerated that when we were all locked in our homes. The second was that discovery would really matter. That serendipity would be an important part of podcast consumption just like it is for video consumption in general. And the third, thinking back to where podcasts came from around RSS feeds, we bet on the fact that podcasters are not different than video creators in the sense that they'd want to host their content somewhere and take advantage of all that comes with it. These three insights were things we bet on early on, and I would say our success in podcast, including the billion users number, was an overnight success many years in the making, mostly because of those three points.
And those billion views, do you have a sense of what share of that is a 90-second clip in Shorts of like Megyn Kelly owning me in an interview or something like that, and what share is somebody watching say more than half an hour? Do you have a sense how much of that is in Shorts?
I don't have that breakout off the top of my head. I mean, just in terms of how our watch time works on the platform, I imagine a lot of that is really the full podcast content. Whether somebody's watching all the way through the full three hours of a particular podcast or not varies from channel to channel and user behavior. But in order to get to those types of numbers, especially things like 400 million hours of podcast content on television screens a month, you're consuming a lot of content. It's not just Shorts.
So, speaking of the podcast content on television and just YouTube content on television in general, what I'm really curious about is how are people watching it? Not in terms of how are they watching it on TV, but what are the ways in which they're watching it? Are they watching it like television, where you kind of put it on and flip through stuff and it's ambiently on for hours? Are they just popping in to watch a quick video to show their friends? I'm sure it's all of the above, but what does the actual habit look like when it comes to watching YouTube on television?
I think particularly for younger viewers, and our platform skews young, when they're turning on the TV they're turning on YouTube and consuming it the way that's television for them. First and foremost, the most important trend we see is that it's all forms of content. Younger viewers expect to see their favorite creator, podcaster, gaming live stream, NFL game, new music video all in one place. That's a pretty significant consumer behavior shift. In terms of the type of content consumed on TV versus mobile, it's actually almost virtually completely overlapping. Your favorite creators on your phone are generally your favorite creators on the television screen. The one thing I have noticed is more and more creators are paying attention to the fact that in many cases the majority of their watch time comes from television screens. You're starting to see more cinematic production, longer form episodic content, creators shooting in 4K. But one final point is it really is every type of content. One of the fastest growing screens for Shorts consumption is the television screen.
You're describing a kind of professionalization of the content in part though, more episodic, higher production, made for a bigger screen. Another way to say that sometimes is more expensive. Is this converging with produced television in terms of how much it costs to make?
I think that there's still, if you're talking about traditional linear production budgets, I think there's still pretty meaningful delta. And I don't equate those two things with production quality.
You don't think user-generated content is going to get pushed out by higher-end stuff?
We don't see it. Going back to my answer to Max's earlier question, our viewers, the two billion people that come to YouTube every single day, expect all of that content to be in one place. They could be watching a 30-minute episode of a popular series and then the next thing might be a five-minute vlog from an up-and-coming creator. The core essence of successful creators on YouTube are people who are able to establish an authentic connection with their fans. And all of their success really stems from that. That is a much higher correlation than production value or production budget.
Interesting. And one thing that strikes me, we were talking to someone earlier on the show about what their biggest surprises were last year and they said it was that there had not been a significant challenge to YouTube, that YouTube's dominance sort of remained unchallenged. I do think it's kind of an extraordinary moment for you guys in terms of your centrality. Everyone is gunning for you. Every company, whether it's Fox with Tubi or TikTok, is thinking how do we grab a piece of YouTube's business. And I wonder in a serious way, what keeps you up at night? Which competitors do you think of as serious? What do you worry about?
So first of all, the way you characterize it is right. I really do think YouTube is in a bit of its own lane in terms of what we do for viewers, for creators, for our media partners. We're not social media, we're not a place you come to connect with friends or family. We're not traditional television. We're sort of our own thing, this place for creation and sharing and watching of video content. And as a result, we see lots of competition from streaming, short-form video, music, subscription services. But when it comes to your core question about what keeps me up at night, I really think our lifeblood ultimately is about catering to our core constituents. If we are not delivering for our creators in two very fundamental ways, then we're in trouble. Those two ways are: are we helping creators build audience? YouTube should be the most efficient way to connect a creative idea or a creator with their fans no matter where they are in the world. And the second is, are we helping them make money? We are the original and largest creator economy. We've paid out $70 billion to creators, media companies, and all of our partners over the last three years. Those are the two things we absolutely have to do. And you accomplish those two things if you're actually delivering what we all want as viewers. When you open up the app on your phone or the television screen, are you actually getting what you really want? That's what I focus on. That's what keeps me up at night. The answer is not Netflix thinking about getting into podcasting. I'm not so concerned about that. If we can deliver on those two things for podcasters, then we're doing our jobs. Our job is to build the best stage for them, and it's our creators and our podcasters and our musicians and artists that stand on that stage.
What kind of podcasts have you noticed do well on YouTube versus on Spotify or Apple? Is there a difference? Is it stuff that's more visual? Do you kind of pay attention to that at all, the differences between how these podcasts perform on different platforms?
I don't look at it specifically in terms of how a specific podcast does on YouTube relative to other platforms. I can tell you what we talk to our podcasters about. Video matters. I mean, and you guys are doing it with your channel, it's not about the production quality, it's not about fancy cameras, but having video does make a difference. It tends to be more engaging and gives consumers choice. If they want to just listen to the audio they can, but this way they can watch what's happening as well. And the other is just what I say to all creators, which is if you have a creative vision or if you have an idea about what you want to talk about, what you want to share, then stick with it. Be steady about it. Be clear in terms of the contract you have with your audience. Don't confuse them. That's advice I give to creators, but the same thing applies to podcasters on YouTube too.
I noticed we're all sort of going in and out of using the word program, podcast, show, creator. Does the word podcast still exist in five years, or is it like blog that's going to go away as all this stuff merges and professionalizes? If it's two people sitting on a camera talking to each other, is that a cable television show? Is podcast an enduring idea or has that sort of run its course?
The way I think about it, Ben, is podcasters that are on YouTube are YouTubers. They generally have the same sort of questions, the same sort of challenges, and the same sort of asks of me as our broader YouTubers do, our endemic creators. And so I think of them that way. Is a podcaster a YouTuber? Is Lex Fridman a podcaster? Is he a YouTuber? I think that podcasters who are really successful on YouTube, they think like creators. They really think as if they're having that conversation with their guests, but really with the audience. And that comes up in a very tangible way, which is the features and the technology that we build to make them successful are quite similar. Yes, of course, we all as viewers or listeners might want certain types of controls, podcasts tend to be episodic, but frankly that applies to other types of creators as well. And so that's how I think about it.
Good television broadcasters also too, right? Isn't it all converging?
