What YouTube’s CEO Really Thinks About YouTube | The Circuit with Emily Chang

Emily Chang 0:00 [upbeat music]

Emily Chang 0:01 Welcome to San Bruno, California, global headquarters to one of the most influential media companies in the world. YouTube launched in 2005 with a simple video of a guy at the zoo. He's one of the original co-founders. And that's pretty much all there is to say. It quickly became a central hub for users to upload and share videos online. Daddy, you bit me. Now, YouTube is an entertainment colossus that's even bigger than Netflix. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has grown into a one-stop shop for your favorite creators, news highlights, TV shows, movies, and even sports games. For the past 15 years, Neal Mohan has had a ringside seat to the transformation. Hello.

Speaker 0:43 Hey, Emily. Welcome to YouTube.

Emily Chang 0:45 Mohan was one of the pioneers of internet advertising, a top executive at DoubleClick, the display ad juggernaut that Google bought in the early days of search. He went on to lead a chunk of Google's massive ad business. He's so valuable that Google reportedly paid him $100 million in stock not to leave. In 2015, he crossed the hallway to become YouTube's chief product officer, making him the point person for everything from developing new products and features to keeping users safe. He took the reins for the top job from Susan Wojcicki in 2023.

Speaker 1:18 I'd been working with YouTube even before either I or YouTube were part of Google, when it was above Pizza Parlor, right down the street here in San Mateo. And so I have really seen that journey really kind of from me at the zoo to what it's become today.

Emily Chang 1:32 Now, as CEO, he's tasked with taking the video platform to new heights and tackling its biggest problems: hate, misinformation, its impact on kids, all while dealing with the unprecedented challenges of AI and keeping the world's largest creator economy afloat. [upbeat music] You're now a year into the top job. More than a third of the planet is already watching YouTube. How do you plan to make it even bigger?

Speaker 2:04 Really, the way I think about it is, um, you know, YouTube's really kind of its own sort of unique thing. We're not, we're not a social media platform. We're not traditional media, in the sense we're not linear television. We're really sort of our own thing. And so if we live up to that vision, um, uh, we think we're, um, really still in the early days of our, uh, growth story and fulfilling what our mission is, which is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.

Emily Chang 2:32 Based on Nielsen's latest data, YouTube is now by far the biggest streamer in the world, Netflix close behind, and then everybody else drops way down: Hulu, Disney, Max. But you don't get the awards or the critical acclaim. What more does YouTube have to prove?

Speaker 2:50 I do think that YouTube is getting recognized as that platform on television screens. We just surpassed a billion hours of watch time on living room screens. And, uh, you mentioned the Nielsen, uh, ratings. That is certainly something that, when I speak to our advertising partners, the brands that look to build connections with consumers on our platform, they recognize that, and they, they see it as a place not just of this broad reach, you know, the number one streaming platform here in the US, but also reach that is engaged. And from a brand's perspective, that is something that they are really recognizing. Like I said, it's still the early days of our journey, but I do start to hear that more and more, um, from our partners.

Emily Chang 3:30 YouTube is printing money for Google, as I understand it, upwards of $15 billion a year. Where will the future revenue growth come from? Talk to us about that strategy and how it will play in.

Speaker 3:41 If you think about YouTube today compared to what YouTube was five years ago, or certainly 10 years ago, there are an order of magnitude more creators on our platform. We have a breadth of monetization offerings to, to support this creator economy, not just ads, but subscription business. Um, you know, that was the, the $15 billion subscription business across all of Google. But also direct to fan funding, uh, like channel memberships and things like that. So there's an enormous amount of scale and complexity in the, in the ecosystem that requires us to rethink how we're gonna support that creator ecosystem. In this video, revealing a step-by-step tutorial on how to start a YouTube channel and how complete beginners are making 100 to $700 a day.

Speaker 4:24 How much money I make? I make around $30,000 per month.

Emily Chang 4:28 I quit my job in the middle of a pandemic to do YouTube full time.

Speaker 4:32 But the goal is the same, which is to make our creators successful on our platform in, in two dimensions: in terms of building an audience, but also being able to earn a sustainable living from our platform.

Emily Chang 4:44 Google's ad business is a monster, thanks in part to you. I mean, you obviously came in in DoubleClick in the early days and, you know, your roots are in, in the ad business. But also it's, you know, stirred controversy about privacy and tracking. What are some of the lessons that you've taken from that, that you're applying to YouTube?

Speaker 5:01 What we are building for all of us as users of the platform, because ultimately it is that connection between fans and viewers and creators that is what's ultimately attractive to advertisers. So if you're not focused on that connection between creators and fans, everything that you're doing from an advertiser standpoint is sort of moot. So that's the first thing. The second is that monetization, building advertising products, and therefore being able to monetize all this amazing content on, on YouTube, is a long-term game. We're going through that journey, for example, right now in terms of Shorts monetization and actually making Shorts a platform that is not just a great place to build an audience, but to also build a business.

Emily Chang 5:44 So you've been at Google for 15 years. You joined when YouTube was best known for cat videos, and now you're carrying the Super Bowl. Like, did you ever imagine YouTube would be carrying the Super Bowl?

Speaker 5:57 I've always felt that YouTube Is a great place for fans. I happen to be a huge sports fan myself, and so really since almost the early da- very early days of YouTube, it's been a place where I personally was consuming highlights and more in-depth interviews and things like that. We just concluded season one of, uh, NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, and it really brought together, I think, kind of two or three really key things that are unique to YouTube about that live sports experience, like ease of use, um, great features, so product innovation, and most importantly I would say actually bringing together creators and that live sports content all in one place, especially for young people. [upbeat music] All right, and here is our living room lab.

Emily Chang 6:47 Awesome. The living room at the office.

Speaker 6:50 Indeed, yes.

Emily Chang 6:51 So do you just sneak in here and check the sports scores?

Speaker 6:53 I do, yes.

Emily Chang 6:54 The multi-view probably helps you.

Speaker 6:56 Yeah, it is a very popular feature-

Emily Chang 6:58 [laughs]

Speaker 6:58 ... in, in our, in our household. Not just for football, but really every, every sport.

Emily Chang 7:02 So you've talked about how the living room is the next frontier for YouTube. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 7:07 Our top creators have grown their, uh, watch time on living room screens by something on the order of 400% in the last, uh, uh, year, or couple years or so. And so we're seeing enormous growth, and it really comes down to the fact that, uh, people come home, they sit down on their couch, and they wanna ... they turn on YouTube, and they wanna consume, uh, all the content that they know and love on it. Everything from, you know, could be like a 15-hour live stream to a 15-minute, you know, favorite video from one of their favorite creators to Shorts.

Emily Chang 7:38 So in my house for my kids, YouTube is their first screen.

Speaker 7:43 Yeah.

Emily Chang 7:43 It almost does feel though like you're trying to be the first and the second screen. Can you win at both?

Speaker 7:49 Of course the context is different, the way that you control it is different, but the, uh, use cases that they're looking for are the same. So it could be watching your favorite creator, like we have Michelle Khare here. She likes to do these sort of very in-depth, uh, quite highly produced documentary-style videos. By the way, she shot this in 4K. So lots of creators obviously know that they have lots of their watch time, or increasing part of their watch time on screens like the living room, and so they want it to look beautiful on these big screens as well, so the 4K obviously comes through very clearly.

Emily Chang 8:23 Oh my goodness. Oh, she's practicing for the thing.

Speaker 8:25 She, she literally trained for six weeks to do this.

Emily Chang 8:27 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 8:29 Yeah.

Emily Chang 8:29 And she was in there for how long?

Speaker 8:31 Uh, like a few... I mean, as long as it took her to get out, but minutes. Like she, she trained-

Emily Chang 8:35 I can't even watch. [laughs]

Speaker 8:36 Yeah. [upbeat music]

Emily Chang 8:41 YouTube has paid out $70 billion to creators over the last three years. That's even more than Netflix is spending on content. Break that number down for us, and, and is, is it paying off?

Speaker 8:54 Just to give you a little bit more sort of sense of the scale of it, we have three million creators in our, in our YPP program.

Emily Chang 9:01 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9:01 So that is lots of, millions of creators literally, um, earning a living on our platform. Most of that is generated through advertising. Advertising is our primary business. But increasingly, um, our SVOD business, our subscriptions business, of which there's two flavors, has grown to be a very meaningful part of our business as well. And so that's YouTube Music and Premium is in, is in that number as well, but we also obviously have a YouTube TV subscription business. And then the third bucket that also gives creators choice in terms of how they earn a living on our platform is something that we call fan funding, and that is the ability to e- earn revenue directly from your fans. And so it's really all three of those buckets, AVOD, SVOD, and fan funding direct to consumer, that generate revenue for our creators.

Emily Chang 9:49 And it's paying off, or time will tell?

Speaker 9:51 I mean, our business is successful when our creators' business is successful, and so we are really pleased with the size of the creator economy, but I also, I remind our teams every day that we're still in the very early journey of, uh, what this could grow and become.

Emily Chang 10:05 Now, YouTube's algorithm can make or break a creator's future. Take us inside the black box just a little. How does it work, and why does it change all the time?

Speaker 10:14 Well, the simplest way to think about, um, the recommendations that they s- that you see in your feed, whether it's the home feed or on the watch page, is it is really a reflection of your interests as a viewer. And so when it's changing, it's changing in the sense of reflecting back your interests or your personalized history of what you are watching on our platform, and that is the simplest way that I can really describe.

Emily Chang 10:42 So it's our fault the algorithm keeps changing. [laughs]

Speaker 10:44 Well, uh, y- because, um, you know, our interests as viewers continues to change. Now, obviously we are also trying to continue to improve that experience for our viewers and help creators get discovered, and so we're not sitting still there. There's an enormous amount of innovation. You know, AI is such a buzzword in our industry today, but w- you know, one of the areas where we've been investing very heavily in AI for, you know, around a decade is actually in those recommendations that you see when you open up the YouTube app.

Emily Chang 11:15 A bunch of powerful YouTubers announced recently they were quitting the platform.

Speaker 11:20 I can't keep this up. This is my dream job, and I have a lot of fun doing it. I know I'm incredibly lucky, but a dream job is still a job.

Emily Chang 11:27 Some of them say they're burned out. Some of them say, you know, they can't deal with the algorithm and all the changes.

Speaker 11:32 I don't love late nights. I don't love the fact that Steph and I have been work first for over a decade.

Emily Chang 11:41 What do you have to say to some of those people? I, I think there's this feeling that you're pushing out some of the more homespun creators for more flashy content.

Speaker 11:48 First of all, everybody's decision in terms of what they choose to do really is a personal one. Uh, I know lots of creators who've choose- chosen to, um, either take a break or perhaps move to different sorts of pursuits. Some of them have moved from be- in front of the camera to behind the camera. Some of them have moved to grow different types of businesses out of their YouTube experience. And I think all of that is actually a natural evolution, but actually also really great because it's a decision that they were able to make based on their success, uh, on our platform.

Emily Chang 12:20 Broadly, Shorts does seem to be YouTube's answer to TikTok. Is it working, or are you cannibalizing c- The OG

Speaker 12:28 YouTube, uh, ha- has to be a place for creators where they can do a 15-second Short or a 15-hour live stream, and we have all of those creators on our platform. And so our investment in Shorts is something that I'm very excited about. We have, you know, 70 billion views a day on the platform. You know, the number of creators uploading Shorts has grown 50% year-on-year. We are in a monetization journey where every single month for the last year since launching our monetization program on Shorts, creators' earnings have grown every single month. So lots and lots of success around Shorts, um, but, uh, it's still very, very early days.

Emily Chang 13:03 [music] So you've done a few of these Shorts.

Speaker 13:05 Yeah, I have.

Emily Chang 13:06 What, what's the secret to a good Short?

Speaker 13:08 Well, the biggest thing that is... really comes across in all of our videos, whether they're Shorts or not, is just be yourself. I'm Chris, and I'm gonna be your videographer.

Emily Chang 13:16 Why are you still talking?

Speaker 13:18 You need to have a hook, so the slide, of course, is definitely something that I think will draw attention. So, you know, just make it all the way down.

Emily Chang 13:27 Hi, everyone. I'm at YouTube headquarters, and I'm gonna shoot my first Short with the man in charge.

Speaker 13:32 Hey, everyone. I'm Neal.

Emily Chang 13:33 And we're gonna go down this giant slide together.

Speaker 13:35 Yeah, I really love this slide.

Emily Chang 13:37 [laughs] All right, ready?

Speaker 13:42 Let's do it.

Emily Chang 13:42 Let's do it. [grunts] Okay. One, two-

Speaker 13:48 I think I got a call, Em

Emily Chang 13:49 ... three. No.

Speaker 13:51 Hello?

Emily Chang 13:52 [laughs]

Speaker 13:54 [laughs]

Emily Chang 13:58 You chickened out.

Speaker 13:59 [laughs]

Emily Chang 14:01 All right, what do we do next?

Speaker 14:02 Well, you've got one last thing, which is you should, um, shoot an outro.

Emily Chang 14:06 Okay, like, "Thanks for watching my video. Don't forget to like and subscribe"?

Speaker 14:11 You got it. Perfect.

Emily Chang 14:12 You're gonna make this go viral, right? [laughs] [music] So many kids these days wanna be creators, but you and I both know it's a lot harder than it looks.

Speaker 14:25 Yeah, I-

Emily Chang 14:25 And is it worrying at all that everyone wants to be a YouTube creator?

Speaker 14:29 So first of all, speaking of someone who doesn't have any creative talent, it is, it is hard.

Emily Chang 14:33 It's hard.

Speaker 14:33 It is amazing what these creators do and how, how they can connect with their fans. Um, I think that it's like any other sort of creative decision that a young person can make.

Emily Chang 14:44 The MrBeast effect.

Speaker 14:45 We just landed in Antarctica, and we're gonna survive the next 50 hours here.

Emily Chang 14:49 It seems like everyone's trying to copy him now. Do you worry at all about the homogenization of YouTube?

Speaker 14:56 There are lots of creators, obviously, that try to learn from his success, but there are 500 hours of content uploaded to our platform every single day. Every niche interest, every, uh, um, learning pursuit that you wanna have, every musical genre. So in terms of being able to find, you know, the particular niche that you're interested in in that moment that you're interested in, I'm never worried about it being-

Emily Chang 15:22 Hm

Speaker 15:22 ... you know, homogenous across all of YouTube.

Emily Chang 15:24 Screen time is the number one thing parents seem to be dealing with right now, and studies are showing that screen time is linked to mental health issues in kids as young as three. Like, we're talking about anxiety, depression. As a dad, how do you grapple with these issues?

Speaker 15:40 It's something that, um, you know, as I'm sure in, in, in your home, I... in, in our home, my wife and I talk about this on a regular basis. We have, you know, kids across a broad range. Um, and I think the... couple things I would say. First of all, obviously, every, every household has to make their own decisions about these things. The second, I, I do think that there, um, at least in our household, we make different decisions depending on kind of the age and development of all three of our kids. [music]

Emily Chang 16:10 It's not just screen time that has captured the public's attention. The frenzy around AI and ChatGPT has put a spotlight on big tech firms scouring the Internet for data to build the most advanced generative AI models. Google made one of the earliest breakthroughs way back in 2012, after it trained an artificial brain to spot pictures of cats using millions of YouTube videos. Microsoft-backed OpenAI recently unveiled Sora, its text-to-video generator, which uses written prompts to make high-def videos. OpenAI has yet to confirm just how it trained its own AI systems, but reports have alleged YouTube videos were used to train its models, violating the company's terms of use. OpenAI didn't respond to a request for comment on the allegations. What was your reaction when you saw OpenAI's Sora demo?

Speaker 17:00 The technology, what's, what's really amazing about this, and our teams talk about this in our product reviews, uh, on a regular basis, is that there are new developments that are happening, um, like, on a, almost on a weekly, monthly sort of basis. And when I think about, again, just, it, from a YouTube perspective, the way that you should expect AI to manifest itself in the product is through creator tools.

Emily Chang 17:26 Hm.

Speaker 17:26 And as a creator, honestly, whether they're powered by AI or not is sort of besides the point. They should allow you to do things that otherwise you could only imagine in the past, or something that might have taken you nine weeks to do, maybe you can do in, like, nine minutes or nine seconds.

Emily Chang 17:44 OpenAI's CTO, Mira Murati, was asked what data was used to train Sora, and she didn't give a clear answer.

Speaker 17:52 What data was used to train Sora?

Speaker 17:55 We used publicly available data and licensed data.

Speaker 18:00 So videos on YouTube?

Speaker 18:05 I'm actually not sure about that.

Emily Chang 18:06 Do you believe that YouTube was used to train Sora?

Speaker 18:11 Well, I don't know. I think first you would have to, you know... I guess they were asked, but, you know, you'd have to ask them. Uh, I have seen reports that, um, it may or may not have been used. I have no-

Emily Chang 18:22 Yeah

Speaker 18:23 ... uh, information myself, and so, uh, I would, I would, I would, um- I'd encourage you to ask them directly.

Emily Chang 18:30 If it was being used, was, would that be against your policy?

Speaker 18:33 It would be. Um, we have a, we have a clear terms of service that when a c- you know, again, from a creator's perspective, when a creator uploads their, uh, you know, their hard work to our platform, uh, they have certain expectations. One of those expectations is that the terms of service, uh, is going to be abided by, and our terms of service does allow for YouTube content, some YouTube content, like the title of a video or the channel name or the creator's name, to be scraped because that's how you enable the open web for that content to show up and, you know, maybe show up in other search engines or what have you and be available that way. But it does not allow for things like transcripts or video bits to be downloaded, and that is a clear violation of our TOS.

Emily Chang 19:20 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 19:21 And so those are the rules of the road in terms of content on our platform.

Emily Chang 19:25 And how does it work internally? Like, is Google using YouTube to train Gemini?

Speaker 19:29 Google uses, um, [lip smack] uh, YouTube, um, content really in accordance, again, back with those terms of service or individual contracts that we might have with creators or uploaders to our platform. Lots of creators have different sort of licensing contracts in terms of their content on our platform. Lots of rights holders do. And so some portion of that YouTube corpus might be, uh, or may be, be- being used for those models, but it's gonna be in concert with whatever the terms of service or the contract that, uh, that that creator has signed before uploading their content to YouTube.

Emily Chang 20:03 When I first saw Sora, I was definitely taken aback. Like, misinformation is already rampant. Are we staring down the barrel of a future where we won't know what's real and what's fake? Like, is this the end of truth as we know it?

Speaker 20:19 Uh, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a... certainly a very, very deep question. It's a question that I, I do get from, um, [clears throat] stakeholders, uh, periodically. I would say that, um, we have to have two, two key aspects of our approach here. First is this technology is here. We can't hide from this technology, and I am just... m- all of my experience, uh, in terms of these types of big paradigm shifts, whether it was, you know, the birth of the internet or, you know, the shift from desktop to mobile, is that it's going to lead to many, many amazing opportunities. Having said that, um, this is also technology that if it's in the hands of bad actors, will reduce the cost of, of producing, in y- in, in your example, deep fakes or misinformation to zero, or very close to zero. So we have to be cognizant of that. AI is gonna play a really big role in actually detecting that type of content, but also all the amazing, uh, trained, um, professionals we have all over the world that are reviewing this content. So all of those things have to come in together, especially with, you know, elections coming up, you know, all over the world. [upbeat music]

Emily Chang 21:29 It's a record election year. More than half the world is voting. How is Google gonna ensure fair information and free elections, especially in the age of AI?

Speaker 21:39 This is our top priority. I think it's gonna come back to, um, a few things here. First, we have a new policy in place that is requiring labeling of this sort of content. Um, we won't just stop there. We have, um... When people are looking for election-related information on our platform, we raise up content that comes from channels that have a history of authority, and again, authority not determined by me, but by, you know, third-party raters-

Emily Chang 22:09 Mm-hmm

Speaker 22:10 ... all over the world that evaluate content from these channels. We have, um, an intelligence desk that is looking for coordinated deceptive practices, state actor, um, uh, deceptive practices that might be using some of this technology. YouTube is an open platform where a lot of that electoral process plays out, but also one where we're doing our best to make sure that, um, this type of technology doesn't allow for misinformation to, to, uh, to get distributed.

Emily Chang 22:37 I hear that you're the kind of leader that, you know, you keep cool in a crisis. Like, what does it take to do that? Especially at a company like YouTube, where, you know, there's a lot going on on the platform every day.

Speaker 22:49 You know, my wife jokes that my nickname is Even Keel Neal, and that's just-

Emily Chang 22:53 [laughs]

Speaker 22:53 ... kinda how I've-

Emily Chang 22:54 Okay

Speaker 22:54 ... [laughs] I've always been, so... And I just, you know, I think from my, my standpoint, it's, it's about keeping perspective, the bigger picture, uh, in mind. And so being grounded in a set of core principles about what truly is important for the business, what's right for our users, allows me to stay calm and actually help the teams make those types of decisions.

Emily Chang 23:13 All right. So what does... Where does Even Keel Neal want YouTube to be in five years? [laughs]

Speaker 23:19 I wanna be a place where, uh, we are the best place to create, to share, to watch a video, uh, that you can think of, regardless of where you are in the world or what device you're on. That's our... That's, that's my vision. That's the vision for YouTube.

Emily Chang 23:35 Thank you.

Speaker 23:35 Thank you.

Emily Chang 23:36 I really appreciate it. Don't forget to like and subscribe. [upbeat music]