At Brandcast, Creators Weigh In On Why YouTube Is Winning TV

A stat that may be surprising to some is that, when it comes to what services people are choosing to watch on their physical TVs, YouTube now consistently ranks at the top. Yes, that puts it above Disney services, above Paramount, and even above Netflix.

Last month, YouTube gathered their top talent and executives for their fourth annual Brandcast to go over, with much fanfare, how advertisers can make the best of their time on YouTube. But also here for the show, and to walk the red carpet, was a stunning who’s who of Creator-world celebrities. Digital stars such as comedian Brittany Broski, streamer IShowSpeed, YouTube’s biggest creator MrBeast, and many others showed up to cheering fans, flashing cameras, and reporters eager for their insights.

So, I took this opportunity to pull in some of the creators on the carpet, and ask them why they thought YouTube, in recent years, has seen so much viewership on television, even above the traditional Hollywood giants one would expect to win there. I asked them what is happening on YouTube, right now, to allow this success and more.

YouTube tech commentator Jacklyn Dallas (@NBTJacklyn) explained to me that with TV viewership there usually comes a more engaged kind of audience, one which allows creators to dive deeper into a topic and spend longer on it.

“I think you have a little bit more permission if you have more TV viewers to have the story be a longer arc. It’s rare that someone clicks on a video on TV and immediately clicks off,” Dallas said.

And so, she explained, this means a creator who is seeking to go deeper can now find an audience, watching on their TVs, who are primed to watch longer, allowing viewership to rise.

In line with this, Sean Evans, host of the wildly popular chicken-infused interview show Hot Ones (under @FirstWeFeast) told me how he and his team specifically design and produce their show with television viewership in mind. In fact, he says TV is where he prefers to watch Hot Ones himself, to get the sound mix just right.

“You know we put up the bass on the hot sauce reactions, like we want your bar clinging glasses when you’re watching an episode. So we like a big screen or theater experience for Hot Ones. So I love when people tell me they’re watching it on TV,” Evans said.

Television viewership allows, then, a way for YouTube creators to more directly connect with their audiences with, at times, longer run times and also sound design that can interact with a larger physical space.

But a big part why YouTube content is uniquely winning TV is how its creators can react to viewer feedback in a way that TV shows might be slower to jump on.

Inspirational filmmaker and YouTuber Dhar Mann (@DharMann) tells me how when one creates a traditional TV show, they can often find themselves working on a project for years and never getting instant feedback to work with. But it’s different for someone working on YouTube.

“For me, as soon as I post a video I’m immediately getting comments. I’m immediately getting analytics. I can make pivots and change whatever I need to. So I stay in real time with my audience. And I’m allowed to grow with the audience,” Mann said.

Popular YouTube comedian Adam Waheed (@AdamW) expressed a similar sentiment.

“It’s been a journey making content with them rather than for them. I’m getting real time feedback in the comments, adjusting, fixing things, adding things,” Waheed said.

This process may sound scrappier than the formal, long-turn production schedules of traditional television, but with that comes a level of authenticity that resonates uniquely with an audience who might be tired of the overly-produced. As online comedian and model Haley Kalil (@haleyybaylee) tells me, people want to see themselves reflected on screen, and so content that feels more relatable and accessible gets closer to doing just that.

“We’ve watched Netflix, we’ve watched Hulu— and I think Gen Z and Gen Alpha want to see real people. People that were born and raised really normal; they came up on their own. It’s not like an A-list celebrity. It’s not like the daughter of a celebrity. These are like your neighbors, your friends, your family,” Kalil said.

Shayne Topp and Courtney Miller, both from the long-standing YouTube comedy channel Smosh (@smosh), echo this idea, telling me how they recently met a fan who told them how their content was so relatable and approachable that it felt like the duo were just some other roommates living with her at home.

“It’s honesty. It’s authentic. People are seeing a very real dynamic between people. Our comedy is what we’re doing when the cameras aren’t on. So I think we build that real connection,” Topp said.

“It’s truly like hanging out with your favorite creators,” Miller added.

Tech commentator Cleo Abram (@CleoAbram), always in the know on the latest in internet developments, told me how so much of this and YouTube’s success on TV comes down to a key strategy, a decision that this platform made which, uniquely, is allowing it to thrive beyond the traditional Hollywood players. And that strategy, ultimately, is giving the creatives the freedom to do what they think is best.

“The bet that YouTube made a long time ago, and what’s turning out to be the winning bet, is that if you allow everybody to make the kind of stories that they want, the kind of stories that get told, and the quality, measured by how much the audience loves it, increases. And so, nobody else is making that bet,” Abram said.

Now, YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan does not appear to believe his platform needs to crush and eliminate the other media services. As he said to Matt Belloni in a recent appearance on the industry podcast The Town: “There’s room for multiple services to be successful.” But Mohan went on from there to describe what areas YouTube is seeking to win in, and why it’s positioned so well to do that.

The idea that YouTube would dominate our television screens might have sounded unbelievable just ten years ago. But now, as YouTube comes to the age of 20, it’s a reality that many in media and entertainment are coming to understand. And, according to some of its creators, the trend is not sudden or random, but stems directly from the strategic decisions, and creative ones, this ecosystem has been setting up for years. And so this leads us to wonder how the decisions being made now will affect this platform, and our media consumption, 10 or 20 years from today.

For more on the creator economy, movies and TV, follow my page on Forbes. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Threads and Snapchat.