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0:41

This is Rico video,

0:43

Peter Koffka. That is me. I'm

0:45

talking today again with

0:48

YouTube's chief product officer, Neil Mohan.

0:50

Neil, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having

0:52

me, Peter. It's great to be back. Neil,

0:54

you are in a hotel room in Palm Springs.

0:56

Why are you in Palm Springs instead of somewhere in

0:58

the Mountain View Silicon Valley

1:00

area?

1:01

I am down here, Peter. You're

1:03

right. I'm in a hotel in the Palm

1:05

Springs area because we

1:07

are doing our top creator summit which

1:10

is an event that we had been doing

1:12

basically on an annual basis until

1:15

COVID hit and brought everything to a grinding

1:17

halt. So it really is

1:19

awesome to be back in person with

1:21

lots of our creators. These

1:23

are creators that have been on our

1:25

platform for a long time. Some of them are

1:27

new. Some of them like

1:30

to work with long form, others with shorts.

1:32

and all of them, some of them with live,

1:34

and so they all get together often

1:37

mostly to just converse with themselves, compare

1:39

notes, what's working, what's not working, what

1:41

do they wanna do next? And also, with

1:44

all of us at YouTube who, you know, as you know, build

1:46

products for them every single day. Right. So

1:48

because you're you you have multiple constituents You've

1:50

got advertisers, you've got people who watch the videos

1:52

and you've got people who make the videos and give

1:54

them to you, and then and then there's there's money

1:57

that you change his hand. And we can

1:59

have a lot of stuff, but I do wanna talk about the news that

2:01

you guys talked about today because

2:03

it's you guys have already said, look,

2:05

we've we've created this TikTok competitor.

2:08

We call it a TikTok clone. It's called YouTube

2:10

shorts. You've rolled that out.

2:12

Earlier this year, you said that a ton of people are using

2:14

it. think one point five billion

2:16

users a month. Is that right? Yeah. Thirty

2:19

billion views a day generated from

2:21

one point five billion users a month.

2:23

and you said ads are coming and today

2:25

you said, not only are ads coming, but we're gonna

2:27

share the ad revenue with the people

2:30

who make YouTube shorts. And

2:32

that's that's pretty meaningful news.

2:34

It's kind of obvious that you guys would do this

2:36

because you guys are already sharing your ad revenue

2:39

with regular YouTube video

2:41

creators, but it's unusual because

2:43

your competitors Instagram and TikTok don't

2:45

really have a program like this. So talk

2:47

about you guys share revenue in the conventional

2:50

YouTube video and how that's gonna change for

2:52

a YouTube shorts creator. Yeah.

2:55

So to the you know, you know, Peter, I've been at

2:57

YouTube a long time. And I would say,

2:59

even in my long time here, the

3:01

announcements we made today were were

3:04

pretty profound by any standard.

3:06

But for somebody like you who's been following

3:08

YouTube for a long time, as you said, A

3:11

lot of it feels very natural to the

3:13

creator economy that exists on YouTube.

3:15

So taking a step back, since

3:17

two thousand seven,

3:18

creators that were eligible for

3:21

something that we call the YouTube partner program,

3:23

were able to monetize on our platform.

3:25

And

3:25

the threshold for

3:27

what we call sort traditional long form

3:30

creators for lack of a better term

3:32

was

3:32

a thousand subscribers or four

3:34

thousand watch hours per

3:36

year. And then there's obviously other

3:38

sort of eligibility criteria, our community

3:41

guidelines, advertiser friendly guidelines,

3:43

all of that all of that stuff. And

3:45

as a result, we've had, you know, millions

3:47

of creators being able to monetize on our

3:49

platform. And to

3:50

be clear, what that did, right, is gave a lot

3:52

of people the ability to not just

3:55

view YouTube as a way to become

3:57

popular or as a hobby, but some people made

3:59

real businesses out of that and their complaints

4:01

about how much money and the rate and all of that

4:04

But but it's really a meaningful thing

4:07

that you guys did. And

4:09

your original your original offer was

4:12

you gave us your video we'll sell

4:14

advertising for you. You, the creator, will

4:16

keep fifty five percent of that, will keep forty

4:18

five. And

4:19

and I I I'm glad you mentioned that

4:21

because That

4:22

is sort of the core of what we're looking to

4:24

do with the announcements that we made

4:26

today, so just to give you an idea

4:28

of what that has meant. Over the

4:30

last three years, we've paid out on the

4:32

order of fifty billion dollars to

4:34

creators, artists, traditional media

4:36

companies, And that's

4:38

something that we're incredibly proud of. The size

4:41

and the scale of the creator economy that exists

4:43

on YouTube globally

4:45

is something that's that's quite

4:47

quite profound. And so we wanted

4:49

to take the success of that YouTube

4:51

partner program and

4:53

expand it in two ways. The first

4:55

way that we're expanding it is

4:57

by creating two new entry points

4:59

for it. The first is for

5:01

shorts, creators, as you mentioned. So if you're a

5:03

creator who produces shorts on YouTube,

5:06

you will now be eligible for the YouTube

5:08

partner program. You need to hit

5:10

the threshold of ten million views per

5:12

ninety days

5:13

And when you do that,

5:15

you can apply for the

5:17

partner program. And then once you're in the YouTube partner

5:20

program, you get to take advantage of

5:22

all that it has to offer, long form

5:24

monetization, short short monetization,

5:26

etcetera. One of the other things that we

5:28

announced today though that I'm also very

5:30

excited about is we're gonna have

5:32

a lower tier for

5:34

the YouTube partner program that

5:36

will apply to creators that are smaller

5:39

so that they can monetize not with ad supported

5:41

offerings, but with things like our fan

5:43

funding offerings like super chat,

5:46

super stickers, super things, channel memberships.

5:48

And that's another way that we're gonna expand

5:50

the monetization opportunities and grow the

5:52

creator economy on YouTube.

5:54

So those were those were two of the announcements

5:57

today. And I'm gonna spend most of my

5:59

time on YouTube shorts because I think TikTok

6:01

and YouTube are are are

6:03

fundamentally compelling things to talk about. But just the

6:05

idea of expanding the pool. What does that

6:07

do for you or for the user? The way I

6:09

will see it is you're saying, look,

6:11

if you wanted to participate in getting YouTube

6:13

revenue, you need to sort of demonstrate that you're

6:15

serious about this. This is a thing you're doing

6:17

for real. And what you're

6:19

saying with bike expanding this pool a bit

6:21

of saying, alright. Some of you just wanna

6:23

sort of use YouTube for different

6:25

reasons. Maybe advertising revenue is not that important

6:27

to you, but you can still make money doing it.

6:29

Is that that fair? Yeah. Or or, you

6:31

know, think of an example of where, you know,

6:33

there's a creator who produces incredible

6:35

content, educational content, everything

6:37

from you know, how to fix my

6:39

garage door to a particular

6:41

niche form of educational

6:44

content that might not immediately

6:46

draw a very large audience and therefore

6:48

generate lots of ad revenue, but

6:50

I there's lots of people out there who

6:52

tell me that they would like to pay

6:54

that creator something or show a token of

6:56

appreciation to that creator in some way. That

6:58

was the genesis of the super thanks product,

7:01

and it might be that that person who showed me

7:03

how to fix the garage door saved

7:05

me a ton of time and a ton of money

7:07

and they're not in the YPP program because

7:10

they're not, you know, they don't have four thousand dollars

7:12

of watch time on that. So but

7:14

should they be able to earn money on YouTube?

7:16

We think so. and so the idea is

7:18

to create a threshold tier that

7:20

works for those types of creators as

7:22

well. So

7:23

let's talk about YouTube shorts. Again,

7:25

it's your TikTok clone. You're you're

7:27

not gonna argue with me about that that description.

7:30

I will add my my clarification

7:32

to that. Okay. But I'll let you finish It

7:35

it it looks like a TikTok. It feels like a

7:37

TikTok. More important if you go to

7:39

YouTube shorts, just like if you go to

7:41

Instagram's reels, you'll see

7:43

it's full of TikToks, you know.

7:45

From what I can tell, it's mostly TikToks that have

7:47

been repurposed. I'm sure it's less

7:49

high percentage than I think. But I can

7:51

tell I can tell when I go to use it, I can

7:53

tell my kids who don't have TikTok know what's

7:55

going on on TikTok because they're watching it on

7:57

YouTube shorts. Do you

7:59

want your version of

8:01

TikTok to be different than TikTok's

8:03

version of TikTok. And if so, what do

8:05

you want to be different about it? The

8:07

way I think about it, Peter, is

8:09

if you're a creator, we want YouTube

8:11

to be your home. I think one of the

8:13

things that makes YouTube unique relative

8:15

to any other platform that's out there or

8:17

any other medium that's out there, is

8:19

it's a place for creators. It's

8:21

a place where creators can build an audience they

8:23

can build a fan fan base. And then as we

8:25

just talked about, the fifty billion

8:27

number that I gave, they can generate lots of

8:29

revenue and build a business. And

8:31

I think that the point that I'm making

8:34

around, it's a home for creators and

8:36

it's about the creators being put

8:38

forward. As opposed to, you know,

8:40

what's the flavor of the day? What's the

8:42

sugar high of the day or what have you? The

8:44

creators can build a business and an audience

8:46

over the long run. and that's

8:48

why we build the products that we do.

8:50

And that's why you're starting to see with

8:52

YouTube shorts a lot more

8:54

connectivity between what's happening

8:57

on the rest of YouTube and the

8:59

shorts product. So, you

9:01

know, creators being able to do things

9:03

like remixing content

9:05

from their existing long form

9:07

videos -- Mhmm. -- and have them become

9:09

shorts. I was with a bunch of

9:11

creators earlier today and they gave me multiple

9:13

examples of how they're using shorts to

9:15

drive traffic to their long form video.

9:17

So you can have linkages between

9:20

traditional YouTube and YouTube shorts. That's

9:22

one differentiator. I know when I talk to

9:24

Instagram and Facebook, they'll say

9:26

that they imagine Reels is gonna

9:28

be more social than

9:30

TikTok is, there'll be other ways to connect

9:32

with friends and stuff. But if I'm just

9:34

someone who's watching videos, I'm the

9:36

consumer of this, stuff. They all

9:38

look the same. They all are often literally

9:40

the same video, same format, same

9:42

mechanism. Should I be able

9:44

to distinguish between a a real

9:46

and a YouTube short and a TikTok as

9:48

just a consumer. I think one of the things

9:50

that you'll start to see, Peter, is

9:52

us

9:52

continuing to invest

9:55

more and more heavily in

9:57

mobile creation in general. Lots of it

9:59

being

9:59

shorts doesn't to all be shorts, but mobile

10:02

creation in general. So that can be all

10:04

the stuff that, you know, you think

10:06

about when you hear the term mobile creation,

10:08

whether it's filters and the facts, and all

10:10

those types of things. Of course, that will be an

10:12

area that we'll continue to invest in. But

10:14

it will also be about all of

10:16

these things that I mentioned in terms

10:18

of connectivity. Right? So for

10:20

example, from a viewer standpoint, if

10:22

you open up the YouTube app, we

10:25

should be able to recommend videos

10:27

in your home feed that are

10:28

based on the types of interests

10:30

you've shown in your short feed

10:33

and vice versa over time. And so

10:35

that's something that viewers will start

10:37

to notice. If they haven't already,

10:39

creators will start to notice. And I think

10:41

that that's good for the overall ecosystem.

10:43

And so you'll start to see

10:45

this vision that we've talked

10:47

about, that I've talked

10:49

about in the past, others have about this

10:51

multi format creators. So

10:53

you can do something in shorts that works

10:55

for you. You can do something in long form. You can

10:57

do, you know, a fifteen hour live stream

10:59

if you want. All of that should work seamlessly.

11:01

on our platform. And just to give you

11:03

a very concrete example just to get to get

11:06

to the essence of your question, let's say

11:08

you're a music fan. let's say, you

11:10

listen to lots of music on

11:12

YouTube, you watch a lot of music content

11:14

on YouTube. Well,

11:16

one way that a new artist

11:18

or a new artist or an

11:20

up and coming artist can break a song

11:22

to you is by using YouTube

11:24

shorts. And obviously, other

11:26

short form platforms do

11:29

that right with trends and what have you. And

11:31

that, of course, is something that we will deliver on

11:33

YouTube. But the difference between

11:35

YouTube and perhaps other other

11:37

sorts of use cases there is that

11:39

you can, as a fan,

11:41

now not just watch that

11:43

fifteen second clip of that song,

11:45

you can tap into that,

11:47

maybe watch the entire music video of

11:49

that song. But you don't have to

11:52

stop there. You can basically tap

11:54

on another

11:55

link and watch Artrax

11:57

from the rest of the album. Understand that

11:59

album. You can

11:59

go even one level deeper and learn

12:02

more about that artist. Well, where did she perform

12:04

for the first time? You know, what

12:06

Brooklyn state was Sheog when she got her

12:08

first break. you

12:09

can follow what her musical

12:11

interests are and build on and on and

12:13

on from there. So it's a very

12:15

clear example and one that I like to

12:17

use because it

12:18

shows the difference between promoting

12:21

a single song and sort of getting that

12:23

immediate sugar high for a week or

12:25

two weeks and building the

12:27

artist,

12:27

building the brand and the

12:30

career of an artist. I like that you're

12:32

describing TikTok as sugar high or

12:34

a fat of the market. I'm not referring to any

12:36

specific other platform. I'm just

12:38

describing this concept of -- Okay. --

12:40

how YouTube is in it for

12:42

the long term for the creator

12:44

and has all these multiple sort of

12:46

touch points that are really

12:48

interesting to that creator's fans.

12:50

Do you want your creators to work exclusively

12:52

on YouTube and YouTube shorts? Do you imagine

12:54

incenting them to do that? The reason, of

12:56

course, they're working on TikTok right

12:58

now is there's enormous reach and

13:00

exposure there. And there's a

13:02

handful of of really prominent

13:04

YouTubers, mister Beast who's here, your biggest

13:06

YouTuber, and most

13:08

successful one saying, I'm actually barely working on

13:10

TikTok because I can't make money there. Just

13:12

about everyone else there is participating in

13:14

some way or trying to work it out. you

13:16

want them to sort of come back to YouTube

13:19

and and work exclusively with you guys?

13:21

We want our creators regardless

13:23

of the format that they're choosing, whether it's

13:25

YouTube shorts, traditional long form

13:27

live streaming to be successful

13:29

with two things. One being

13:31

able to build an audience, so

13:33

you put their originality out there,

13:35

their original piece of content out there,

13:37

and build that audience, and then

13:40

be able to monetize that audience. those

13:42

are the two things that YouTube should be able

13:44

to do consistently for creators

13:46

all over the world. And that really is the goal.

13:48

Everything that that you're that we're

13:50

talking about vis à vis our announcements

13:52

today is really focused on that.

13:54

How do we bring all the

13:56

benefits of that creator economy that we've

13:58

built? for

13:59

long form

13:59

video and bring it to something like

14:02

shorts. So you didn't say whether

14:04

you want them to be exclusive, so obviously

14:06

you're not putting any exclusivity requests

14:08

or demands on right now. Do you imagine at

14:10

some point that becomes part of

14:13

working on YouTube shorts? Or do you think

14:15

you live in a world where Anyone who's serious about

14:17

being creator is gonna work on multiple formats and

14:19

you gotta accept that. The way the way I

14:21

think about it, Peter, is what I said earlier,

14:23

which is we're in this

14:25

business to really be the home of creators.

14:27

And so for that, that means

14:29

being the place where they find them

14:31

being able to build their most sort of

14:34

authentic true audience. I hear that over

14:36

and over from creators, by the way, shorts

14:38

creators, long form creators. And

14:40

once they do that, also being able to generate

14:42

a living, being able to earn a living,

14:44

doing what they love, and that's really what we're

14:46

focused on. I don't want to be

14:48

antagonistic. I just want to know that you didn't tell

14:50

me about exclusivity. But that's fine. You're not

14:52

asking for it now, so we will leave it there. We're

14:54

gonna be right back with Neil Mohan to first

14:56

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we're back. Well,

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I wanna get technical for a

15:59

second. On traditional

16:02

YouTube, you guys would give the the

16:04

creator. We keep fifty five percent of of

16:06

the revenue you guys get forty five.

16:08

You flip that for YouTube

16:10

shorts. You're also changing the

16:12

way you're operating differently

16:14

than YouTube does in terms of

16:16

YouTube, if I watch him, mister Beast video, he

16:19

participates in the ad that all the ads that are

16:21

sold around his video, the pre roll, mid

16:23

roll, etcetera. here for for

16:25

YouTube shorts, you're taking sort of a pool

16:27

of money and allocating it

16:29

out to users based on to creators

16:31

based on usage. why

16:33

both of those changes? Let me start with

16:35

your the second part of your question first

16:37

because it's related to the first. So

16:40

as you know, shorts is consumed in a

16:42

feed. It really is a

16:45

feed like behavior where you're consuming the

16:47

short. You might watch it again, but you're you might

16:49

scroll to the next next

16:51

short. And so

16:53

really the user kind of

16:55

modality is like you're consuming

16:58

essentially every session a pool

17:00

of shorts. And

17:00

so just

17:02

like other feeds, it's just more logical

17:04

to insert ad breaks

17:07

at places that work from a user

17:10

standpoint in terms of their time,

17:12

etcetera. And so we wanna retain that

17:14

flexibility to be able to do that in a way that

17:16

works best for users. and therefore works best for

17:18

creators and advertisers. And so

17:20

that's that's the reason behind the

17:22

change. It's really behind the

17:24

modality. of how users consume short.

17:26

It's how users consume it and also

17:28

how you're advertising. So it's not like there's

17:30

a pre roll for a YouTube

17:32

short clip. There's just there may

17:34

be as an ad every three or four videos that

17:36

I scroll through. Yeah. And it might be

17:38

that the format of the ad over

17:41

time becomes different because of the way

17:43

that the users interact with shorts. I mean,

17:45

it really is this sort of like

17:47

scroll modality type feed

17:50

use case. And so you can imagine

17:52

that,

17:52

you know, what, fifteen second

17:54

pre roll doesn't work in the same

17:56

way in a feed like that. And so we're gonna have

17:58

to continue

17:59

to get creative from an advertiser standpoint

18:02

so that ads can play

18:04

a fruitful part in that

18:06

short speed ecosystem. And

18:09

there's something about the intentionality too.

18:11

Right? I mean, you you know, on conventional

18:13

YouTube, I think this data is like seventy

18:15

percent of of what you end up watching is based on recommendations, but

18:17

you're still often deciding what to watch. You can

18:19

just let YouTube watch over you, but very often

18:21

you're clicking on stuff. Whereas in

18:23

shorts, it's all just sort of a stream and you're

18:26

you're saying yes or no, but it's coming at you. It's a you're

18:28

it's a little more passive in some way.

18:31

But so you feel that this this is a

18:33

reasonable way to compensate people. And then in

18:35

terms of giving them ten percent less than they would have

18:37

gotten if they made a a conventional YouTube video, what does

18:39

that tell us? So it's really it's really

18:41

a few things. First, as I said,

18:43

we're moving to this speed based model

18:45

as opposed to direct association

18:47

with the video. And so

18:49

all creators that are in that

18:51

pool now. So it's a pool

18:54

that's calculated, I think, over a

18:56

kind of a thirty day period,

18:58

So it is and it's distributed by views

19:00

amongst that pool in

19:02

that period. And so, therefore, the ad

19:04

is no longer associated with

19:07

any particular creators

19:08

video or what have you. So there's that

19:10

aspect of it. The

19:13

other

19:13

aspect of it is

19:15

Stuart's creation and other and

19:17

many creators have actually alluded to this is

19:20

just very different. Not only is

19:22

it obviously mobile first

19:24

and shorter by definition in terms

19:26

of creation. We're

19:28

also providing a lot of the

19:30

tools and technology for that creativity

19:32

happening. And so there's a big

19:34

amount of investment that's happening in the

19:36

creation process around shorts

19:38

where we're we're gonna continue to

19:40

double down. You asked earlier, Peter,

19:42

in terms of what are the things that we're gonna do

19:44

to continue to differentiate the product. A lot

19:46

of them are gonna be in this creation

19:48

bucket, you know, links to the rest

19:50

of the YouTube corpus,

19:53

better effects, better filters. And

19:55

so that is a lot of investment

19:57

that we're continue to do that will grow the overall

19:59

pie for shorts, but

20:01

we wanna have a business

20:03

model and a monetization model

20:05

here that is sustainable for the long run.

20:07

And just to be just to be very

20:09

transparent about it, a model has

20:11

to work for creators.

20:14

It has to work for musicians.

20:16

It's gotta work for all parties in order

20:18

for it to be successful. And that's how we ended

20:20

up at the forty five percent. And

20:22

the the one of those parties is is YouTube and

20:24

Google and your parent company alphabet. And just

20:26

to be clear about it, you know, at the scale that you

20:28

guys are monetizing conventional you

20:31

YouTube. It's twenty eight now twenty nine billion dollars

20:33

last year. You won't be anywhere near

20:35

that with YouTube shorts in the near term.

20:38

easy to imagine that it ends up that ten percent ends up

20:40

being real money, especially if you're

20:42

there's always a concern for any Internet company,

20:45

especially when Google's age that it's sort of

20:47

its conventional business is gonna slow

20:49

down. So it just seems obvious that you guys would

20:51

want to keep more of that margin for yourself

20:53

if you could. Plus, it gives you the

20:55

chance to, by the way, change that number if you

20:57

end up at a a competition with with

20:59

Reels and TikTok. Speaking of

21:01

Reels and TikTok, Instagram and

21:03

TikTok, Instagram doesn't have any version

21:05

of this. And TikTok has announced

21:07

a version of what you're doing, although it's

21:09

gonna be a smaller pool. Why do you

21:11

think your competitors either

21:15

aren't trying to spend at the rate you're

21:17

spending or Instagram's case really

21:19

aren't trying to compensate creators

21:21

directly for the stuff they're giving up.

21:23

Yeah.

21:23

I mean, what I would say, Peter,

21:26

is and I mentioned some of this in

21:28

my in my remarks earlier

21:30

today at the event where we were

21:32

launching all of this You know, I'm extremely

21:34

proud of the fact that we are the first

21:36

platform that offers revenue

21:38

sharing for short form creators at

21:40

scale. were the

21:41

first to do that back in the original

21:43

days of YPP all the way back to twenty

21:45

eight two thousand seventeen. Let's let's stipulate

21:47

that that they you guys are out in why do you why do you

21:49

think your competitors haven't said, oh, that

21:52

works? This this continues to

21:54

work. Why wouldn't they use that same

21:56

model? Yeah.

21:57

I I don't know, Peter, you'd have to ask them. But every

21:59

time I speak

21:59

with our creators, they talk

22:02

to me about two fundamental things,

22:04

which is what

22:06

are we doing next to help them continue

22:08

to grow their audience, come up with new

22:10

creative ideas, and then help

22:12

them build build a

22:13

business off of that audience. these creators,

22:15

as you know, very first hand,

22:17

they are they are businesses in their

22:19

own right. They employ people. They

22:22

hire people. they really want to

22:24

grow. And so we want to give

22:26

them through our announcements today

22:28

a program that allows them to do that not

22:30

just for long form and live content,

22:32

but also for short form. When

22:33

did you realize that TikTok

22:36

was going to be a huge

22:38

cultural and

22:41

and business is gonna be huge.

22:43

And and and that and competitor to what

22:45

you did. You

22:47

know, you you guys well, you you tell me, let

22:49

me just answer the question. I'll

22:51

let you answer the question instead of me talking more about that.

22:53

Yeah. I mean,

22:54

look, you will you will recall in

22:56

the early days of YouTube,

22:58

you know,

22:58

the thing that was first of all, it's kinda funny.

23:00

The thing that we call long form on YouTube

23:03

today, that was short form back in the

23:05

day. Right? you

23:05

remember, like, the three minutes, the five minutes, the

23:08

seven minute videos, people are like, what is this?

23:10

Who's gonna watch something that's just five minutes

23:12

long? How can you get into any kind of

23:14

depth or

23:14

or nuance in that. And obviously

23:17

youtubers have proven people wrong

23:19

in spades there. But if you go

23:21

back to those days and you think about those

23:24

creators, Well, what did they do? They had a camera

23:26

on probably on a tripod. It

23:28

was probably in their bedroom or on their

23:30

dining table or what have you.

23:32

and then they just produce that video. And that's where the

23:35

canonical vlog was born. And so if

23:37

you fast forward to today, what

23:39

are

23:39

these new creators doing while they have a lot

23:41

more technology in their pockets on their phone.

23:44

They can be mobile. The phone

23:45

is oriented vertically and so they're shooting

23:47

it that way. there's a lot more

23:49

easy ways to mix in effects and things like

23:51

that. And so to me, it's the same

23:54

thing that's happening today. with

23:56

short form creators that happened originally

23:58

with long form creators fifteen years

24:00

ago. It's no different. So why

24:02

should YouTube's approach to it be

24:04

any different. YouTube is the home of

24:06

creators and we need to be able to cater to all

24:08

of these use cases. And of course, we

24:10

saw and this and and to your

24:12

question, like, when did I first start to

24:14

see this? Probably

24:15

started to see this, you know, over the course

24:17

of the last,

24:18

you know, kind of, three, four years.

24:20

And it was around short form

24:22

content vertically oriented, being produced

24:24

on other applications, but also

24:26

being uploaded to YouTube.

24:28

conventional way of

24:30

talking about TikTok is they have this genius

24:33

algorithm that knows what you want

24:35

and and they've all these different ways to figure out

24:37

what you want, and and that's what separates

24:39

them. I have this hunch that's actually the

24:41

format and the scroll and the fact that

24:43

if something's boring, you flick through it, a

24:45

second that that is more meaningful in

24:47

the algorithm. But I'm curious how

24:49

you assess sort of the data that you have

24:51

at your disposal and how you'll be

24:53

able to tailor a recommendation

24:55

for me versus TikTok. I'd

24:57

also like you to explain. I I used YouTube

24:59

shorts for the first time today in

25:01

preparation because I do I do some real research for

25:03

this. And I got a whole lot of Ben

25:05

Shapiro videos inexplicably

25:07

in my feed. Is that is that is Ben

25:09

Shapiro the starter kit for all

25:11

YouTube shorts users? I will certainly take a

25:13

look at your recommendations. I appreciate you.

25:15

That's great too. And thank you. But what

25:18

I would say is, look, I

25:20

think that what you're describing

25:22

is, you know, the essence of what

25:24

YouTube does. We're able to put

25:26

suggestions in front of you of content that we

25:28

think might be interesting to you. And obviously,

25:30

we apply, as you and I have

25:32

talked about many times in the past, our

25:34

entire responsibility framework to that

25:36

in terms of you know, our community guidelines

25:38

and our, you know, reduction of

25:41

misinformation and all of that. I won't get into that

25:43

stuff today. But subject to

25:45

all of those tweaks

25:47

to our fundamentally recommending content that we

25:49

think you're interested in, and that's the way

25:51

the short speed works. And I gave

25:53

you an example of where I think the

25:56

the power of that will lie in the future, which is

25:58

why shouldn't I be able to learn from what

26:00

you're interested in your short speed?

26:03

and

26:03

give you recommendations that are valuable

26:05

to you when you're sitting down on your couch

26:08

watching it on your living room screen. Are

26:09

those linked right now? Are you is my

26:12

shorts feed? influenced by what I watched

26:14

on regular YouTube and vice

26:16

versa. Those links are happening right now. And

26:18

they're, as you know, with our algorithms, that's

26:20

always a continuous improvement. paradigm.

26:22

And so the idea of being able to

26:24

bring the intelligence, you know,

26:26

in my

26:26

example, from your short feed to

26:29

a

26:29

video that you might watch on your living room television device

26:33

is is is an idea that exists

26:35

that we're gonna continue to

26:37

build on. We think that works really well

26:39

for viewers, but we also think it

26:41

works really well for creators. You've had

26:43

a long day

26:44

and it's late over here, so I'm gonna let you go.

26:47

But one last question there is a report

26:49

out today. I'm sure you saw it from

26:51

Mozilla saying the tools that

26:53

you guys give YouTube users to

26:55

to tune their algorithm

26:57

basically to tell you that you don't like a video or

26:59

you like it, that actually it's kind of

27:01

equivalent pressing that closed

27:03

elevator door button. doesn't

27:05

really do anything. First of all, is

27:07

is Mozilla right? And two, more

27:09

important. How how do I as

27:12

a user convinciingly tell

27:14

you to give me more of something or

27:16

less of something. Do and do you want me to be

27:18

active in that? Yeah. So I I'm not

27:20

familiar with the details of their of

27:22

that specific study, I did hear about

27:24

it. So I'm not sure of the

27:26

methodology or really agree with

27:28

the conclusions there. But what I can

27:30

say is when it comes to the

27:32

recommendations in your feed. First of all, you do have

27:34

control being able to

27:36

tap and say, don't show me

27:38

this. do,

27:39

of course, honor honor

27:42

that

27:42

request, but we take into

27:44

account a number of different signals that go

27:46

into your recommendations, not just

27:48

what videos you watched in the past and what

27:51

other videos are associated with those

27:53

types of videos. But things like likes

27:55

and dislikes, and

27:57

a number of things on the order of

27:59

eighty billion signals a day go into

28:01

the recommendations that are generated in home

28:03

feeds and watch feeds. on a

28:05

regular basis. And so What what matters what matters

28:08

more to to YouTube? What

28:10

you think I wanna watch or what

28:12

I tell you? Well, first and

28:15

foremost, my belief is that

28:17

when it comes to our

28:19

users data, our users have to be

28:21

in control. So Peter, if you wanna opt out

28:23

of your watch history, search

28:26

history on YouTube, you can do that. You know where those

28:28

controls are, you can do that

28:30

right away. And that, of course,

28:32

impacts what we're able to recommend you. You might see

28:34

a feed that looks and feels a lot

28:36

like trending, for example, because none of that

28:38

personalization exists. Let's say I

28:40

haven't opted out. Let's say I'm conventional YouTube user, but

28:42

I'm I'm hitting dislike or I'm hitting

28:44

don't show me this. Is that gonna

28:46

is that gonna effectively get

28:49

rid of stuff, that stuff and stuff like

28:51

that? Or will you keep coming back to me? It's like,

28:53

actually, we kinda think you do like a version of

28:55

this. Here's another try. Yeah. So it

28:57

will be a signal that we take into account. Obviously,

29:00

for the specific video that's requested, but

29:02

I think your question is

29:04

more broadly, like, is is that

29:06

topic of video is gonna eventually get excluded

29:08

or excluded right away. And we

29:11

generally don't try to

29:14

put entire topics in one

29:16

bucket or the other. That has, you

29:18

know, frankly, has lots of other

29:20

issues with it, you know, everything that and you

29:22

and I have talked about this in the past, things like

29:24

echo chambers and the like and rat

29:26

holes etcetera. And that is obviously

29:28

something that we also don't aspire

29:30

to on our on our platform. But

29:32

fundamentally, we're looking to deliver the

29:34

highest quality recommendation to our users.

29:36

And every time we get that feedback from

29:38

our users, which are directly the in

29:40

product surveys and other ways that we can

29:42

capture that feedback signal from our

29:44

users. Our users generally tell

29:46

us that they really do appreciate shape the

29:48

recommendations that is the heart

29:50

of their experience on YouTube, both in

29:52

long form and now increasingly in short

29:54

form video. We're gonna leave

29:56

it there. Neil Mohan, YouTube chief

29:58

product officer. Thanks for coming on. We'll

29:59

see you sometime in the next three years.

30:02

Neil? Thanks, Peter. It's good to be with you

30:04

as always. Thanks again to

30:06

Neil Mohan. Thanks again to our

30:08

sponsors who let us bring you this

30:10

show for free. Thanks as

30:12

always to Travis Johnny who produced an edit to

30:14

show extra thanks to Giovanni this time

30:16

because he put in some late hours to

30:18

get this one to you. Thanks to you

30:20

guys. You listen, you're

30:22

right to me, to all the people about the podcast. One of you took me

30:24

out to lunch this week. That was nice.

30:26

Thanks for listening. This is Rico Media. We'll

30:28

see you next week.

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