Connected TVs emerges as the fastest growing screen for YouTube

Amidst the surge in digital video services, online Indians are curating personal video universes consisting of an average of 5 content platforms, with YouTube emerging as their foremost choice for watching videos. As the number of Internet enabled households equals TV households, viewers are bringing YouTube onto the large screens in their living spaces. With millions of viewers watching YouTube on their Connected TVs, it has emerged as the fastest growing screen for YouTube over the past five years. With creators using Shorts as another tool in their arsenal to express themselves, YouTube Shorts’ average daily views grew by over 120% year-on-year. Giving further definition to their content curation, 33% of Connected TV consumers in urban India do not watch linear TV at all, with logged-in viewers averaging 2.5 hours of YouTube watchtime per day.

Satya Raghavan, Director, Marketing Partners, Google India, said, “In the fifteen years since we launched YouTube in India, there has been an extraordinary all-round digital transformation, in connectivity and in content, and today, people have created a boundaryless viewer experience for themselves that straddles across their smartphones and their connected TVs. We’re delighted that, in this rapidly evolving landscape, YouTube is the platform of choice for four out of every five people online. This is a testament to the unflagging contribution and inventiveness of India’s vast and growing creator economy. Marketers have responded to this heterogeneity by tapping into YouTube’s unique environment to reach their consumers at the right time, in their preferred language, in the right need state, on the right device, with the right creative, and with their most appropriate products. Our AI-powered ads solutions that span the spectrum of creation, customization, and deployment will position businesses at the most rewarding intersection of media, creative, technology and content that only YouTube offers, and help brands achieve their business objectives with the advantage of incrementality.”

YouTube Shorts grow in popularity

With an average of 70 billion daily views globally, YouTube Shorts continues to grow in popularity amongst viewers in India with 96% aged 18 to 44 using YouTube Shorts. Shorts watchtime now also transcends devices with 88% of online 18-44-year-olds watching short-form video content on a TV over the past 12 months. Viewers in India are also splitting their viewing time across many different video formats, spending no more than 21% of their viewing time watching one format.

Gen Z gravitates to YouTube

YouTube is Gen Z’s choice as the #1 place they would spend their entire viewing session, significantly more than social media platforms. Driving this preference is that YouTube allows them to easily choose what they watch, offers access to a wide array of content types, and has the best music videos, including clips and previews. Moreover, in purchase decisions, too, Gen Z relies on YouTube for ads that are personally relevant to them and 88% agree it introduces them to new brands or products.

YouTube content uploads grow 40%

Together with the total hours of content uploaded to YouTube by channels in India growing by over 40% in June 2023 vis-a-vis June 2022, 35+ adults averaged over 70 minutes of YouTube per day in this month. Watch times of videos on the “grwm” or “get ready with me” trend grew more than 500% in the last quarter of 2022, compared to the same period last year, and with “episode highlights” or “season recap” in the title by 120%. As creators begin to tap generative AI for new ideas and audiences, the year has seen over 1.7 billion views of videos related to or using generative AI tools globally. 70% of 18-44 year-old viewers online agree that they are open to watching content from creators that use AI to generate their content.

New AI-powered solutions to enhance ad creativity

Building on the commitment to integrate AI into the full spectrum of phases spanning ads creation, customisation and deployment to help marketers unlock YouTube’s unique multi-screen, multi-format viewer experience, and reach audiences with relevant context, engagement and results, YouTube has announced the launch of a suite of tools in its Ads Creative Studio. With these, marketers will now be able to easily create multiple versions of a single display or video ad customized for different audiences, locations, languages or contexts. Providing this never-before flexibility will be the AI-powered Flip Video, that will enable advertisers to build vertical assets, even when they were not planned for, and the Trim, which leverages machine learning to create 6-seconds bumper ads to help drive efficiencies in campaigns.

New ways to reach CTV viewers

With several significant shifts now well underway, and businesses navigating a rapidly evolving media landscape marked by “cord cutting”, YouTube has been investing in helping advertisers unlock overall media value through increasingly effective cross media campaign measurement. As part of these longstanding efforts, YouTube revealed that the Nielsen CPG meta analysis has shown that YouTube drives nearly 2.3X better ROI than Linear TV with over 65% of 18+ audience reached on YouTube being incremental to TV.

With the goal of engaging this growing cohort of Connected TV viewers, over 50% of who watch content that is 21 minutes or longer on the large screen, marketers in India will now also have the ability to leverage two new advertising solutions specific to this audience.

• 30-Second YouTube Select Non-Skips, only on Connected TV: Advertisers will soon be able to put a 30-second non-skip ad in front of YouTube’s most popular content – from top creators to the biggest content moments.
• iYouTube Connected TV Pause Experience: To help brands drive awareness and action during a user-initiated break in a viewer’s streaming session, YouTube will begin piloting new Pause experiences on Connected TV in 2024. This is seamless for viewers and allows them to learn more about a brand - while creating further opportunity to drive saliency with relevant audiences.