While you may largely associate YouTube with on-the-go smartphone use – the watching of cat videos during commutes or repeated viewings of Despacito at a party – the television is actually one of YouTube’s fastest-growing device platforms, according to a report by The Guardian.
The company’s chief product officer Neal Mohan has said that people in Europe are collectively clocking 180m hours of watch time per day, a number that “is growing 45% year on year”.
That’s no doubt in part to the ubiquity not only of smart TVs in the last five years but also the YouTube app’s presence on them.
The fact YouTube is creating more original content as well as packaging and playing host to popular programming (notably James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke series) will inevitably have something to do with that rise too.
But while YouTube is undoubtedly driving video content forward, and seemingly starting to take up more and more of people’s TV time away from broadcasters, Netflix and Amazon, Mohan doesn’t believe YouTube is a major threat to them.
“The thing I would point out is, regardless of device, in terms of what consumers are watching, traditional broadcasters have always been part of YouTube.
“We’ve been working with broadcasters throughout Europe, but particularly here in the UK, for years and years, and the really sophisticated ones understand that it’s a way to reach an audience above and beyond just television,” he said.
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