Intro for March 7, 2025

Dear Gossips,  

YouTube turns twenty this year, which doesn’t seem possible, because I remember when YouTube started, and I cannot possibly be OLD. But, ugh, time will insist on passing, which means that yes, YouTube is twenty and I am old, and you might be, too. To mark the 20th anniversary of YouTube, Variety has a feature about the evolution of the platform from panic-inducing “piracy” site of the 2000s to the juggernaut streaming platform it is today.

It is interesting to think about how far YouTube has come, from another garage-based tech startup that sent Hollywood into a tailspin over copyright and piracy fears to a central pillar in media advertising and streaming. The article has some truly eye-popping stats, such as YouTube being the second-most visited website in the world, and the second-biggest search engine (in both cases, it is outranked by its parent company, Google). Other stats include 2.44 billion monthly users, but most relevant to the entertainment industry, in the US TVs have surpassed phones and tablets as YouTube’s primary viewing device.

Building on that, media analytics firm Nielsen shows that for two years Americans have watched YouTube on their TVs more than any other streaming platform, including Netflix, and paid subscription service YouTube TV is the biggest internet-based live TV platform in the US. Granted, these are essentially regional stats, what’s true in the US isn’t necessarily true in other countries. But it shows how entrenched YouTube is in our digital habits, and that when we talk about streaming platforms, we usually aren’t talking about YouTube, but we probably should be. Clearly, they are dominant in the space.

And yet the media executives interviewed in the article, such as former NBC boss Jeff Zucker, who once had YouTube remove the breakout SNL digital short “Lazy Sunday”—one of the very first viral videos—sound remarkably chill about YouTube as a competitor. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledges they are competing with YouTube for viewer eyeballs, but also that YouTube is a vital and valued marketing partner. And yes, YouTube is the premiere place to find movie trailers, press interviews, and hundreds of hours of video that fuel press tours that drive movie and TV series popularity among fans. 

But you would think, given the rising primacy of YouTube as a main-event destination for digital entertainment, people would be more worried about it. Maybe they’re not because YouTube IS such an important marketing space for other media companies, or maybe it’s because YouTube’s paid subscription services are equal to less than half of Netflix’s total subscriber base…right now. I wonder if the other streaming execs don’t worry overmuch about YouTube (right now) because it is still primarily a free platform that is a more direct challenger to linear and cable TV. After all, YouTube already crashed and burned on running their own development studio (Cobra Kai was one of their biggest hits, which found second, bigger life…on Netflix). 

The subscription streamers can talk about viewing hours and eyeballs all they want, but what they’re really after is your sustained subscription payments. They want you to sign up and never quit their service, whether you’re watching daily, or even weekly, or not. So to them, maybe YouTube, which is still growing its paid subscriber base, still doesn’t seem that threatening. But after reading this article, it probably should. Because CLEARLY, people are spending a LOT of time on YouTube (including me, I have about a dozen channels I subscribe to and check regularly). And since YouTube is also firmly entrenched in the digital marketing space, the question then is what happens when it grows from a premium streaming house cat to a lion? What happens when YouTube IS pulling paid subscriptions from streamers like Netflix and Hulu? I really don’t know, but something tells me we’ll find out sooner rather than later.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah