Okay, everyone, we're gonna get started.
Yeah. What's that?
Okay, you ready? Let me start with the safe harbor, Neal, okay?
Okay.
Some of the comments made today by Mr. Mohan could be considered forward-looking. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to Alphabet's Forms 10-K and 10-Q, including the risk factors. Any forward-looking statements that Mr. Mohan makes are based on assumptions as of today, and Alphabet undertakes no obligations to update them. Neal, thank you for being here.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I know you guys are excited about that. Now let me tell you a little bit about Neal before we get going. CEO of YouTube. His focus is on empowering creators, fostering community, and driving the future of video. Prior to becoming CEO in 2023, he served as YouTube's Chief Product Officer. Before joining YouTube, Neal was a pioneer in digital advertising, first leading product development and strategy at DoubleClick, and then as Senior Vice President of display and video at advertising at Google. Neal holds a degree in electrical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Stanford as well, and last year he was named Time Magazine CEO of the Year, so congratulations on that.
Thank you.
Okay. This is Neal's third appearance in the past four years, and we are honored to have him. Congrats on being named CEO of the Year by Time. In that article, you were quoted as saying that, "The entire dynamics of the media industry are changing before our very eyes. It's incredibly disruptive, and if you don't adapt, you can be left by the wayside." Now all of us in this room are quite familiar and well-versed about that disruption. Can you talk about some of the biggest adaptations that you've made in the past years since you last graced our stage?
Yeah. Well, first of all, Michael, thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here. Nice to see some familiar faces in the audience as well. You know, I'll start by just maybe a little bit of big picture, 'cause I think that sets the context for, you know, the rest of our conversation, which is, as you point out, it is an incredibly dynamic time in the industry. Lots of aspects of it are changing, driven by all of us as consumers and viewers of media. For us, or at least for me, it's helpful that there's lots of consistency to our strategy.
In terms of context, I'll say a little bit of what I shared last year, because the most important thing is our strategy remains the same, which is at YouTube we have this flywheel, and it always starts with our creators. That, I believe is a unique proposition about YouTube. It's Creators, YouTubers call YouTube their home. That's differentiated from social media. It's differentiated from streaming and TV. Everything starts with that, and our adaptation there is to really keep pace with what these creators want to do from a business standpoint in terms of creation tools, in terms of, you know, expanding their audiences, connecting them with new audiences all over the world.
For example, eliminating, in many ways, the only barrier that exists between a creator and their fans in the world, which is language, through things like AI-powered multi audio dubbing. Multitrack audio. Creators are the core piece, but that's what attracts the 2 billion viewers that come to YouTube every single day across all screens, across living room, across mobile, desktop. Living room in the U.S. gets 200 million hours of watch time every single day. Viewers are really important, and then ultimately, obviously, that's what attracts the monetization.
We are primarily an AVOD business, a third of our revenue now is SVOD subscriptions, and that's also an area that is very ripe for innovation, a lot of it AI-powered, which we can talk about. That's the broad flywheel, creators, viewers, and then monetization. What's changed about it in the last year is it's just accelerated. I think a lot of that is through our efforts. I'll just give you two examples. The first is, you know, we talk about our creators. Many of you have heard me talk about creators, YouTubers. They are the core strength of YouTube.
It's interesting to me, especially in the last 12 months, how many non-endemic creators, people who come from other, you know, parts of the media industry, whether they are athletes, right? You know, at our Brandcast event last night, we had Dwyane Wade and Draymond Green talking about their channels on YouTube. Whether they're Trevor Noah or Oprah, all of them wanting to become YouTubers. That's a really big sort of trend in the last few months, and I think accelerates this flywheel. The other piece is going in the other direction, which is if you are a YouTuber, it opens up a whole plethora of opportunities for you. One of my favorite examples, everybody knows about MrBeast, but one of my favorite examples is a creator called Markiplier. Mark built a movie. He self-funded it.
He led his millions and millions of subscribers on YouTube through that journey over the last several years and then released it in theaters. He thought it was an independent production, so maybe it would be in two or three theaters, maybe 50 theaters. Because of his YouTuber follower base, it opened to thousands of theaters and was the Number 1 grossing movie on the weekend that it was released. That trend, those trends of, like, creators really sort of being these businesses, other folks wanting to become creators is really accelerates that flywheel, and that is a trend that we've seen in the last 12 months.
I was gonna say to you, when I think about our own coverage here at MoffettNathanson, it feels to us in the past couple years, it's striking to see the traditional media world now waking up to YouTube and the power of YouTube. I know you've had a, you know, Brandcast for the past seven or eight years. You know, you've been at YouTube for a while. What were the early bets and innovations that you know, you thought would pay off, right? When you go back to, like, this crazy idea called YouTube, now it's what it is, but what attracted you to it as a business model?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the nice things at YouTube and being part of the Alphabet family is we can make long-term bets. Whether it's, you know, investing in AI alongside our sister company in Google DeepMind. I'll just give you some examples of those. One of the longest bets that we made, and people thought we were crazy at the time, was investing in our subscriptions business. Today, you know, YouTube Music and Premium has, you know, as of last year, over 125 million subscribers. You know, YouTube TV is what it is. When we were making those bets, people were like, "Well, why would people pay?
You already offer all of this for free. Turns out that, if you add user value, whether it's, you know, interruption-free or downloads background and building more and more features on top of it, users see value in that, and that's why we built that business. That was a bet that we made, you know, a really long time ago. Fast-forward to today, this last quarter was, we added the most non-trial subscribers ever in the history of Premium, globally, but also in the U.S. That was a really big bet that we invested in. Another one which, you know, I talk a lot about because it was also kind of one of those overnight successes that turns out was many, many years in the making, is YouTube in the living room.
Over 50% of the watch time of YouTube happens on TV screens in the U.S. We saw those early trends, actually well before COVID. Obviously accelerated in COVID and sort of, kind of continued, but that was a bet even before COVID. It required an enormous amount of technological innovation because the television market, unlike mobile, is very heterogeneous, right? Like, all kinds of OEMs, et cetera. We had to make the video feel cinematic, 4K, 8K. We had to invest in episodic content. Podcast is another one where turns out that actually hosting podcasts and betting on people wanting to watch, not just listen, turned out to be a big bet, and we are now the Number 1 podcast platform globally.
Those are some examples of how we you know, identify trends, and then we invest in them very heavily, forward invest for many years in some cases, before they end up actually producing returns. You know, they've led to the successful position we are now in living room, podcasts, et cetera.
You segued to my next question, which is, you know, we know that YouTube is more than $60 billion of revenues, and we know it is the biggest media company and most valuable company in the world. You talk about subscriptions. We think it's growing faster, probably twice as fast as advertising, right? Can you talk a bit about the products drive that, and any surprises and learnings? I don't know if you I know you made a bet on subscriptions, but it's growing at literally, you know, high teens rates based on our-
our work.
We, as you know, Michael, we have two subscription businesses. We have YouTube Music and Premium. That's the 125 million+ subscribers. Then we have, you know, YouTube TV. I would say that the kind of the strategic insights or the product insights are similar in both of them. The first, and I think, you know, probably the most important, is just product innovation. You know, we've invested very heavily. Hopefully, you know, many of you are subscribers in the YouTube TV experience, right? Things like Multiview, things like key plays, like really leaning into if, you know, we're fans of that media, how would we wanna consume that type of type of content? Product innovation is one. I already talked about how we thought about that in YouTube Music.
Yeah
Premium. The second is, actually giving real consumer choice. The fact that we offer a subscription, a paid subscription that comes with a particular set of features and, you know, content, that in and of itself is a way of giving consumer choice, but we've really leaned into that. For example, with Premium, we now have a SKU that's below that called Premium Lite, and Premium Lite is a way for people to pick the SKU that works best for their wallets, but also for the value that they're looking to get out of it. We just launched on YouTube TV 10 different tiers, you know, a sports bundle, sports plus news, entertainment, et cetera. Again, to just give broader consumer choice, and I view that as TAM expanding, opportunity expanding, delivering value for viewers.
Those have been sort of the two most salient insights in terms of how we've been able to grow our subscription business.
I wanna come back to those, the bundles and the packs. I'm very happy you guys did that for YouTube TV, but I want to talk to you a bit first about pricing, 'cause I think for the first time in three years, you increased pricing on YouTube Premium, and I can tell you that my YouTube bill for TV is higher now than it was three or four years ago. Talk to us about what's driving those price increases, and what gives you confidence that there's not a consumer pushback and churn doesn't increase.
You're right. It's the first time in three years that we raised price on Premium just a few weeks ago. The first and foremost is what I said, which is we look at making sure that we're delivering real user value, and there's multiple ways of doing that. Obviously, acquisition and churn is one way, sort of, kind of hard metric way of doing it. We survey our users pretty regularly. We keep getting that feedback. If you're not delivering that value, you don't have a right to raise prices. That's the biggest thing. These are businesses where we also have to make sure that we are fair to our partners. You know, it costs money to put this content in front of our users.
Our SVOD businesses are, have a professional content provider aspect to them, whether it's the traditional media company partners, whether it's the music labels. we pay them for our subscribers, and so that's an that all of that goes into the consideration. You know, I think the most important thing that, you know, is that we all as consumers get to vote with our feet, so to speak. Despite the price increases over the years, our business has continued to grow. As I said, this was our strongest quarter ever in Q1. That, to me at least, is an indicator that our viewers who have lots and lots of choice, see a lot of value in our subscription products.
What's great about having you here is that there's been a ton of discussion at this conference about AI and the dream of AI. You're actually using AI, and you've been using it for a while. You talk a bit about how you're using AI across your, you know, your creator market, your ad market, your consumer market, and where you are on that journey in terms of things that, you know, how would you measure where you are today, and what are the things you're dreaming of in the next couple of years?
Yeah. I do think that YouTube has this very sort of unique vantage point when it comes to this AI sort of revolution that we're in. On the one hand, we are working with the most cutting-edge technology, the deepest technology, inventing it at YouTube, working, as I said, very closely with DeepMind on a daily basis. We're exposed to that depth of technology and how fast it's moving. We also face the creative industry, the media industries every single day. The way that I think about AI and how it is transforming or really you know, empowering the YouTube business is really empowering human creativity. I'll go back to the flywheel that I talked about. For us, AI is first and foremost about making our creators' jobs easier and more effective.
The most obvious place where you see it in the YouTube product is when you open up the app and you hit that plus button, a lot of the creation tools that exist there are powered by Gemini, Veo, you know, all of our investments in AI models. Now, you know, if you are watching a YouTube Shorts and you want to insert yourself in it, you can do that through AI. It might have been something you were able to do, sort of kludge together, might have taken you a few days. Now it happens in less than a minute, right?
That's What that does is it makes creators free to go and do other things that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to do, and it also expands the pool of creators. That's on the creation side. Viewers, I think it's all about finding. It's about two things. One is using AI to continually improve the power of YouTube recommendations. Hopefully, this is something that you all experience, an improvement, literally on a monthly basis, and that is a deep investment in Gemini and making it so that there is a much deeper understanding of all of us as viewers when you open up the app that makes the recommendations better.
You know, from a monetization standpoint, it's really about making it so that we can deliver ROI for advertisers, whether it's being able to generate creative using AI that they can put in Shorts or in, you know, kind of YouTube traditional long form, whether it's about better optimizing their campaigns that run on YouTube. It really is every aspect of the flywheel. I could go on and on.
Right.
There's so many parts of YouTube.
Can I ask you, of the three markets you serve, where do you think you're the furthest along, where you see the most tangible benefits from rolling these tools out today?
I mean, I really think it's across all of these. I mean, the creation tools have been in the product for, I'd say now a couple years. Every week, every month, we're adding new capabilities there. The one aspect that every time I talk to creators that I hear about is not just these creation tools around videos, but how do we make the whole creative journey easier? I was with a creator at our Brandcast event last night, and she was telling me how much she loves a product called Ask Studio, and that's when you go into YouTube Studio, which is the product that creators use to manage their videos on YouTube.
Instead of going and, you know, maybe asking for a particular report or a slice of data, you can just ask Studio, and it literally will give you deep insights in terms of trends on your videos, on your channel or what have you. Now there's infinite pieces of insights that you can get out of something that you previously would have just, you know, it would have taken you days or weeks to actually pull that insight using all the reporting that we had. Now it happens instantaneously. That's it. I'm very proud of how far we've moved the ball from a creator standpoint. That Ask, we have a feature called Ask in on the viewer side.
If you watch a YouTube video on your phone or a desktop, you might notice that Ask button right below a video. That's a way for you to actually interact much more deeply with the video itself. If you're listening to, you know, a new Justin Bieber song or video, well, you can ask, where did those lyrics come from? How did he think about that? It's just a deeper connection between viewers and creators. In April, that had 75 million users using it on a regular basis. Those are just some examples of how you see it in the core YouTube experience, and they're enhancing it. It's really all of these pieces are being accelerated and, you know, every month you sort of see new capabilities getting layered on.
Right. Are developing fascinating you thought?
I mean-
You know, like are you being blown away by the things you're seeing on the creator side?
I mean, I think that any time you put a new set of capabilities in front of creators, it is really amazing how quickly they adopt them, and it's really amazing what new types of formats and creativity it produces. Given how fast the underlying AI technology is developing, especially at Google, like it's no surprise that you're seeing that in terms of how creators are using these features.
Okay, let me ask some questions we get from covering other industries. We cover the music industry, and a question we get a lot is, can you talk a bit about how you view the impact of AI-created content on consumer behavior when it comes to music, right? How do you think that develops?
Well, there's two aspects of it. One is on the actual creation side. Music, you know, for decades, and, you know, I've been in the music industry for a very long time. Artists adopt new technology, right? Like, the drum machine back in the '80s, or new ways to actually produce new sounds. They incorporate that into their creativity, into their craft. That's one aspect, where you're seeing that in the music industry. Again, it is a tool to empower the human creativity as opposed to a replacement, in my view. So, that's one piece, and we partner very closely with our music partners in that regard, whether they're the labels, artists directly themselves.
The other piece is that My guess was that when it came to AI and the media industry, music would actually be one of the places that would be impacted first and perhaps most profoundly, at least early on. One of the things that we did was, you know, I went to all of our label partners and tried to come up with these set of principles around how we would innovate here. The first principle was, like, you know, the industry couldn't bury its head in the sand. Like, it had to be bold in terms of adopting these technologies because they were coming. Also we had to do it in a way that was responsible to the artist, to their fans, et cetera.
To give you a flavor of that, one of the pieces of technology that we've worked on a lot in the AI realm is something called likeness detection. For those of you familiar with YouTube, you'll know that one of the foundational pieces of the entire creator economy is a technology called Content ID. Content ID is about giving rights holders the ability to actually have their content It's actually one of the earliest uses of AI at YouTube almost 10 years ago, maybe longer, where they have control over what content comes down, how it gets monetized. We're taking that same principle to the AI world with likeness detection. If an artist's singing voice is, you know, generated, then that artist should have control over how it's used, output control over it.
That is a unique to YouTube-type capability and principle that we're bringing to the AI realm. Music is one of the places where you'll see its adoption, because now if you're an artist, you get to decide, do I want to monetize that, or do I want it removed?
Do you think there's a risk longer term that consumers will start adopting more AI-created content over traditional recorded music? You probably see the data from YouTube Music side of it.
I mean, my belief is that a lot of music and why we all, you know, fall in love with music and why it's such a core part of the culture and our sort of core memories through our life is because there's human stories behind them, right? Like, two computers can play chess, but in order for us to be interested, at least one of them has to be human, right? I think the same thing applies in the music realm. It doesn't mean that there won't be AI-generated music that is part of this journey, but at least in my view, I don't view it as a replacement.
Okay. I have to ask you about platform health and AI slop, right? As the technology develops, how do you prevent AI slop from really, you know, infesting the platform and hurting both the user experience and the creator's ability to connect and build a community?
Look, I mean, we talked about all of these amazing tools that AI will enable, one of the aspects of them is a lot more people can create. The cost of producing, you know, videos for YouTube goes down dramatically, and that can lead to amazing content, but it can also lead to low-quality content. This notion of low quality or spammy content has been, you know, a concept that has existed on platforms, including YouTube, for many, many years, that we have dealt with effectively through our content policies, our trust and safety systems, but also our recommendation systems. The way that our recommendation systems on YouTube work is looking at a concept of long-term satisfaction.
Not just watch time in the near term, but are you satisfied over the long term in terms of your YouTube experience? That is a very, very effective tool at weeding out low-quality, spammy-type content in the process. Those same techniques are being applied to things like AI slop, low-quality AI-generated content. You know, I'm pleased with what we're seeing. It doesn't mean that the challenge isn't going to be there, but it's my team's responsibility to remain on top of it so that that doesn't become something that you associate with your experience on YouTube. I'm confident it won't be, but that's sort of how, that's how we approach it.
The other thing that I'll say very quickly on that, Michael, though, is, it's also important to make sure that we don't overdo that because AI is also gonna enable many new forms of creativity, There are lots and lots of very mainstream popular genres on YouTube that exist today that might have seemed strange when they were first invented. Like, the most canonical example is, you know, watching live streams of people playing Minecraft. Like, who would do that? Turns out that's an enormous, you know, vertical on YouTube.
I've asked that question.
It's created a culture that resulted in a $300 million grossing Minecraft movie last year. It's really, really important to make sure that we don't, you know, suppress those types of emerging forms of creativity that might have seemed strange at first. We're always trying to strike that balance, but, you know, AI slop is not something that we're gonna see prevalence of on YouTube because of some of these techniques I just described.
You've said it here today, you've said this throughout your whole time as a leader, you've really focused on the creator world. That's something that you guys are truly supportive of. Seems like in the past couple years, a lot of your competitors have woken up to the power of the creator universe. What are you doing to ensure that the creators that are on YouTube continue to stay on YouTube? Can you talk a bit about the monetization opportunities that are on YouTube versus other platforms?
I mean, it's so fitting that this is happening right after our annual Brandcast Upfront last night. It was a celebration of creators. We talked about so many new projects that our creators are embarking on because of YouTube. Show after show after show, the audience excitement, the advertiser excitement was palpable. It goes back to the fact that when you speak with these creators, they tell you over and over that their home is on YouTube. You know, when their success on YouTube creates opportunities off of YouTube, I view that as the success of those creators on YouTube, but also YouTube's success.
Because of the audience that we have been able to build for them, the fandom that we've been able to build, because of the monetization opportunities we give them on YouTube, it creates all these opportunities on YouTube, but also off of it, and I think that that contributes to the flywheel. Our creators tell us that. You know, our biggest creator, you know, did a show with, you know, did Beast Games, MrBeast. You go into his offices, there's a sign that says, you know, "The first rule of MrBeast is YouTube first," because he knows that the font of his success, whether it's Feastables, whether it's Beast Games, derives from his strategy and commitment on YouTube, and I see that across all of our creators. They tell me that over and over.
It's nice, it's amazing to see that other platforms have sort of identified YouTube creators as sort of the center of culture, and they are talking to them repeatedly. The one thing that's nice is our creators recognize that they have this position of strength now, and they can dictate the terms, including remaining, having YouTube remain their home. You know, some of the big things that really contribute to that are not just the audience that we build for them, but what we can do from a business standpoint. These are entrepreneurs. In the last four years, you know, up to last year, we paid out over $100 billion to the creator economy across all of our partners. That is an enormous investment in our creators.
We have 3 million creators in our YouTube Partner Program that monetize every single day, and we grow new forms of monetization all the time. We talk about AVOD and SVOD, but we also have direct fan funding models like channel memberships, like paid digital goods, gifting, et cetera, that contribute to creators' revenue on our platform, and we're gonna continue to invest in that.
Okay. Let me take you to somebody you know well from even your days pre-YouTube, DoubleClick, then post-NBA DoubleClick again. What do you see as the biggest opportunity to drive better ad growth at YouTube?
You know, I think for the big picture is the reason why advertisers are interested in YouTube starts with, again, back to the flywheel, the creators and viewers that are there. You, when you go to YouTube, there is every type of format, every type of creative idea, from on-demand to live, from 30-second Shorts to 15-hour live streams, to everything in between, to watching, you know, a highlight clip for five minutes to a two-hour podcast about sports. That's the essence of what actually makes it truly attractive to advertisers, because of that depth of content, whether it's on the living room screen, whether it's on your mobile device, is what gives advertisers every sort of use case.
Meaning that from the top of the funnel to the bottom conversion, you can do all of that on YouTube. That is something that our advertisers recognize. If you're a brand advertiser, you can build relevancy around your brand, build a story. You know, just last night we had a great example from Coach, 85-year-old brand, or over 80-year-old brand. It was looking to recapture some of the relevancy around the brand, particularly around Gen Z and young users, which of course are on YouTube. They really leaned into creative storytelling on YouTube. It was a 60% increase in awareness, 600%, six times increase in consideration, and a substantial increase in acquisition.
Every aspect of the funnel was hit by their YouTube strategy, and I think that is a unique differentiator of YouTube, from all the other players, whether it's, you know, social media on one end or, you know, kind of traditional linear TV and streaming on the other end.
Okay.
The same thing applies to new opportunities like shopping. That's an area, as you know, that we're investing in heavily. Whether it's boosting creator content that already has links to, affiliate links to your products, whether it's turning a television screen not just as a viewing medium, but a shopping medium by having things like purchase with Google Pay or QR codes. Our job there is to create all of these new ad products that tap into that core aspect of YouTube, which is every device, every type of format of content. When I speak with advertisers and brands, that's what really resonates with them over the long run.
Right. Over the past 12 months, YouTube has decelerated, Search has accelerated. Can you talk a bit about the factors that may be causing, you know, the kind of the change in the growth rate from where it was 12 months ago?
Yeah. I mean, again, I think it's, the way that we look at it is ultimately all of the ad products that we build, whether it's, you know, the AI conversation we were having, whether that empowers new creative types, new forms of optimization, it's about ROI to our advertisers, and that sort of ultimately is what grows the Google Ad business, and of which YouTube also benefits, not just Search, over the long run. That's really the best way to look at it, and that's what you should expect, not just from YouTube, but from Google overall in terms of how we look at it, which is ultimately what is in the best interest of our advertisers, what are they telling us. They care about ROI on the performance side.
Brand advertisers also have their success metrics that they measure in ROI terms. It's not just about, you know, views or reach. It's about how you actually hit those goals of awareness or consideration that I described in the Coach case, and that's how you should expect Google to look at that.
Okay. Can I ask you about live events? You know, YouTube had an NFL game last year. You have the Oscars coming in 2029. What is your appetite for continuing premium events and putting it in front of your paywall? Importantly, how has the conversation changed with rights holders as you've added some of these premium events?
Yeah, I think that the best way to think about it, again, just to give you sort of some kind of inside framework on this, is, it's really about live events, as you said. YouTube is a place, you know, we really are, you know, the epicenter of culture, not just because of what the creators are doing every day, but also because of these big tent pole moments that exist.
Live is a way, is one of the few mechanisms of sort of true watercooler moments, and the place where that happens is on YouTube, whether it was the Artemis launch, you know, I'm guessing most people watched it, if you watched it live, on their YouTube channel, whether it's Coachella, which was this, you know, it was happening at 3:00 in the morning on the East Coast time when Justin Bieber was on stage, yet it became the world's biggest cultural moment, his Vibe session, in terms of his YouTube history. Especially if you're a young person, right? Like, that was the culture for, you know, a week or two. We see that in the data all the time.
Live is a big driver of that. That's kind of one of the thesis behind our investment, whether it's sports, as you mentioned, the Oscars, because they are these cultural moments, and they get amplified when they're on YouTube because of all the fandom that happens around them that shows up in Shorts or other forms of, you know, long form VOD content. I look at it sort of three lens, right? Like, can we, by having it on YouTube, is there a chance to expand the opportunity? You know, in the context of Sunday Ticket, that was, well, you don't need a guy to install a dish on your house, right? Like, you can get it with two taps. That's TAM expanding, right?
You don't need it to be tied to another subscription, right? Like, those are that's one piece. The second is, can YouTube bring some real technological innovation? Multiview, right? Multiview is a great example. On the YouTube TV side on the sports, well, guess what? One of the ways that people consume Coachella the most is multiview because Coachella is this concert that's across multiple stages. Wouldn't it be great if you could see four stages at once? Then the third piece is our creators. Like, can they enhance that viewing experience? You saw that in the context of the NFL. You should expect to see that in the context of something like the Oscars.
Okay, cool. connected TV, we touched on it before. The growth of connected TV has been amazing. You now tower over the number two company, Netflix. We get a question all the time about what type of content's driving this consumption trends, and talk a bit about the demographics, because in the data, older viewers like myself are growing faster than even younger viewers. Can you give us, you know, under the hood on CTV, what are you seeing-
Yeah
driving this?
I mean, I think at the n- you know, there's over 1 billion hours of watch time every single day on living room devices on YouTube globally, 200 million in the U.S. you know, there's, there are billions of hours of YouTube, I mean, of Shorts watch time over the course of a month in the living room. At that scale, from a demographic standpoint, it's really all demographics, right? Otherwise, you're not at those types of numbers. In terms of what's driving it, I think it's back to what I said, which is, can we create an experience that really allows this content to shine? Most of the content that is consumed on YouTube, on living room, are from our creators, from YouTubers. That is the reality, because that's what viewers, especially young viewers, want to watch.
When they're turning on the TV, they're turning on YouTube, and that, it's their YouTube experience that they're getting. That's probably the most fundamental sort of profound thing that I would say about living room growth. You know, I think that's an area that's, you know, that has lots of, you know.
Right
future opportunities as well.
demographically, in terms of the mix, you know.
I think it's across the board.
Right. You're not seeing Okay, got it.
Yeah.
We have time for a couple more. Let me ask you about Shorts. It looks like at Meta, Reels are driving revenue acceleration pretty aggressively. Some of that could be ad load also on Reels. To what extent can Shorts drive further monetization for YouTube? Last year, you broke the news that YouTube Shorts was monetizing.
Yeah, right here.
Exactly. I wanted you to break some more news. What are you seeing now in terms of the ability to monetize Shorts and where does it go from here?
I mean, look, the, first and foremost, the way that we think about Shorts is it's another creative format for our creators. It's another way for all of us as viewers to enjoy their YouTube experience. It is a mobile-first experience. Although, you know, one of the fastest growing places for Shorts is on the living room screen, believe it or not. That's what you should expect us to continue to invest in, is the viewer and creator experience. In my view, and I've been in the ad business for a long time, the advertising opportunities really stem from that. The nice thing about Shorts is that you can come up with formats that are less interruptive in the feed, right?
That is what you have hopefully seen in your own Shorts experience. You can even have formats like stickers. I was speaking about shopping as a growth opportunity on YouTube, but we have shopping stickers on Shorts that allow for product placement and driving shopping that way. That's seen lots of success. We have, you know, over 500,000 creators that have tagged their videos with shopping. In terms of the RPM trends that you were talking about, we have, you know, we've reached parity, not just in the U.S., but in several countries, and in some countries we've even exceeded it, including the U.S. That's just a continued investment really in that full flywheel. I would really encourage folks to not just think about it from an advertising standpoint in isolation.
It really is about delivering, you know, creator and viewer value first.
Okay. My last question, and it would not be a MoffettNathanson conference if I didn't ask about YouTube TV and the changes that you brought to linear bundled television. I thank you. You know I'm a big user. You announced 10 specialized plans. What has been the consumer response to those plans? We would've hoped that the bundle, the sports news bundle would've been cheaper versus the big bundle. You know, I was looking for a real discount here on the sports news.
Right. Yeah.
Talk to us about consumer adoption on that plan and maybe the hopes longer term to find more efficiencies.
Yeah, I mean, look, it goes back to what I said earlier about giving consumer choice. Like, that was our vision with YouTube TV when it first started, these tiers that we introduced really are about just giving more choice at various price points. Lots of customers of YouTube TV are sports fans. Could we give them a tier that's sort of close to that? Lots of them are also not sports fans, do we have offerings for them too? It's really only been launched for two months now, it's still really early, probably too early to say anything concrete about it. You know, it's our vision of actually giving more consumer choice.
It is, you know, I don't really think about it in terms of bundling or not aggregation or not. For me, it's really just about consumer choice. You're describing an experience in YouTube TV. On YouTube, the main app, we also try to replicate that with things like Primetime Channels alongside the endemic YouTube content and creators that you're watching.
Do you think we'll get to a place where we can get all our content that we subscribe to at YouTube TV, right? It still bothers me to go in and out of YouTube TV to get games here and there.
You mean going to other apps?
Yeah.
That's-
I'd love to have a super aggregator of all my premium content in one place.
Look, I mean, I think one of the strengths of YouTube is that, like I said, you can get everything from your 15-second Shorts from your favorite creators to 15-hour live streams, to, you know, three-hour NFL games and kind of everything in between. That is the vision. That is an intentional vision. A lot of our investment goes towards that. When we see pockets of content that are missing, we innovate. That's where YouTube TV came from, you know, linear, live sports, live news, et cetera. That's where Primetime Channels came from. Could you get your professionally produced kind of traditional content alongside your creator content? That's our vision, that's our approach. We have many Primetime Channel partners now. We're in a handful of countries. We want to roll that out to more countries.
That's sort of how we think about solving that particular consumer pain point.
Okay. Neal, thank you for being here. Congratulations on the success.
Thank you.
We appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.