YouTube, Already a Connected TV Titan, Looks to Grow Even Further

Today, TV represents YouTube’s fastest-growing experience for users, as the pandemic has allowed people to stay at home and binge on their favorite shows. Although mobile remains YouTube's top platform, the company is aggressively focused on expanding its presence in the connected TV space, where it is already a titan. The company is poised to see even more growth in the TV space in the coming year. Last December, over 120 million people streamed YouTube and YouTube TV on their TVs, up from 100 million in March 2020, Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer and Google's svp, revealed during the IAB's Annual Leadership Meeting. “The work-from-home environment—all of us sheltering in place—really accelerated that trend, which continues into 2021,” Mohan told Adweek. YouTube Spaces Goes 100% Virtual As of December, the largest categories in year-over-year watch time growth include humor (a 60% increase), music (50%), education (50%), cooking (40%) and travel (40%). People have also been developing new hobbies in the past year, as videos with the word “beginner” in the title have been viewed more than a billion times since mid-March. Watching YouTube on TV Among connected TV apps, YouTube is behind only Netflix when it comes to streaming share on big screens. It remains the top outlet with ad inventory. Mohan called connected TV "an important area" for the company, despite mobile's continued dominance among YouTube users. "It is going to remain a focus for us going into the rest of 2021 and beyond,” he added, pointing out its popularity among viewers, creators, brands and advertisers. “Not only is there rapid growth from all of us that are consuming video streaming on connected TV devices, but there's now a very significant portion of YouTube users that only consume YouTube on TV and living room devices,” said Mohan. Measurement expansion YouTube's increase to 120 million connected TV users comes at an opportune time for the company, following a deal last October with Nielsen, which is expanding its connected TV measurements to YouTube and YouTube TV. Ads watched on YouTube and YouTube TV on connected TV devices will be added to Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings and Nielsen’s Total Ad ratings in time for this year's upfront. “What's really important to media buyers is being able to measure the efficacy of those campaigns and the performance of those campaigns—and also comparative performance, especially as it relates to potential alternatives for those media dollars,” said Mohan. “In the connected TV realm, a lot of that is around traditional linear media. Being able to bring a capability from Nielsen so that they can understand sort of an apples to apples picture around their campaigns is really important in what gives them the table stakes to continue to grow their investment on platforms and content like YouTube.” According to Comscore, 82.5% of CTV reach in the U.S. spreads across just five streaming services—Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney+—yet only two of those outlets sell advertising. Mohan isn’t worried about the growth of newer ad-supported services like the recently rebranded Paramount+, Peacock or HBO Max's upcoming ad-supported tier. “Overall, the pie is growing of all these streaming services relative to other places where content can be consumed," Mohan said. "There’s tremendous growth on living room devices and connected TV devices." How ViacomCBS’ New Streaming Head is Taking Lessons from Pluto TV to Transform Paramount+