[Music]

the man himself, CEO of YouTube.

>> I didn't realize that when I took over

the CEO gig, a big part of my job would

be being a straight man. For a lot of

YouTubers out there,

>> YouTube is now by far the biggest

streamer in the world.

>> Shorts, I think, has just surpassed 70

billion views a day.

>> Mohan was one of the pioneers of

internet advertising and keeping the

world's largest creator economy afloat.

We think we're really still in the early

days of our growth story and fulfilling

what our mission is, which is to give

everyone a voice and show them the

world.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome

YouTube CEO Neil Mohan.

How are you? Good to see you, brother.

Thanks.

Nice to see you,

>> David. How are you? Nice to see you.

>> All right. Welcome, Neil.

Neil

>> and I could have done that together.

>> I mean, you could have.

>> What did you think? Um, we talked to him

a little bit about which platform is the

most important. He said the one that

pays us the most. You don't pay for

content upfront. You've done some

experiments. You do it all with the 55%

revenue split. You sweep 45%. Seems like

you're doing pretty well. Are you taking

too much money from creators?

>> Let's get into it.

>> Can we get that down to 30%?

Um, well, first of all, thank you all

for having me. It's a privilege to be

with you guys. Like they say,

>> uh, longtime listener, first- time

caller. So, it's great to be here with

all of you.

>> Do you listen to the podcast? Yeah.

>> Uh, I watch it.

>> Oh, you watch it? Where do you watch it?

Where did you you like Spotify?

>> On YouTube?

>> Oh, on YouTube. Yes, we're there now. We

are there now. Yes.

>> Can you please be prepared?

>> Yes. Yes.

>> I didn't know we had a YouTube channel.

Really? How's it doing?

>> How many folks watch it on watch it on

YouTube? Just out of cur. There we go.

All right. Okay.

>> It's about half. Yeah,

>> the channel is growing. You guys are

close to a million subs, watch time,

views, all up and to the right. So,

congrats to congrats to all of you guys

on that. But on your question, um, uh,

Jason, so we we've paid out in the last

3 years over $70 billion to the creator

economy. We are the we are the original

and world's largest creator economy. Um,

and so,

well done. And um that innovation which

is called the YouTube partner program is

well over a decade now. The the 5545

that you're referring to. And um so we

pay out billions to creators creators

our media company partners the music

partners etc. Uh I'm using that term

creator and I'll use it for the la next

30 minutes sort of in the broadest sense

of the term. Um it's just that the way

that we do it is very different. I mean,

we're we're a creator economy in the in

the true entrepreneurial sense of the

word, which is if you're a creator on

YouTube, um, contrasts to the

traditional model, you're betting on

yourself, which is, um, kind of the

opposite of sort of the way that

traditional media models have worked.

And as you grow, as your audience grow,

as your success grows, um, your

monetization grows, your business grows

as well. And not every creator on our

platform is going to become, you know,

Mr. Beast or Dude Perfect, but there

are, you know, north of 3 million

creators that are in that partner

program today earning revenue.

>> Back to my question, I feel like you've

created all these stars and you look at

the Tuckers, you look at the Megan's,

you know, we'll put ourselves maybe

right behind them. We all choose to turn

off monetization because the take rate's

too high and we can do it better

ourselves. Should you not start to think

about two classes of folks? The

upandcomers who don't have sales teams,

who don't have distributions, maybe

it's, you know, it's more about building

an audience and then maybe looking at

the folks like us slightly differently.

And this seems to be a weakness in your

game. Um, your take?

>> Um, I would I would say that, you know,

the way I think about he doesn't speak

for us just

for myself. No, but the point is

>> I just want to be clear that I love you.

No, no, but it's clear that people who

are at this level take it on themselves

because the 45% is just an absurdly high

take rate for that level of person, the

Tuckers, the Megan, they'd rather just

bake their ads in. So, how do you think

about that level of folks? They

participate, but you don't monetize

them.

>> I think that that's um that's not the

way I would characterize it. First of

all, I think the the the way that I

think about it is all of these

monetization models should be available

to you depending on what your business

objectives are and what they're not. And

I've talked to a bunch of you guys about

sort of how you think about that

monetization question and what's

important versus audience building and

not. And by the way, it's the same type

of conversation that happens with sports

leagues or studios or what have you

there. And so my my vision on all of

this is whatever model works for you as

a creator podcast or what have you

should be the model that you adopt. And

so for example, you take um you know

what Tucker's doing and Megan's doing

and they you know they have had enormous

success on our platform um mostly driven

because they're incredibly talented at

what they do and the audience and the

algorithm have figured that out. But it

might be that the monetization model

that works best is something where

they're representing their inventory

themselves. And that I think is less

about sort of take rate or what have

you, but sort of the best way to

actually package it up. And so that's

that's really the way that I think about

it. But if you're a creator getting

started today, you're not even concerned

with that at all because the the

monetization is really only a byproduct

of what you've been able to do from an

audience engagement standoint.

>> The net is what matters, right? At the

end of the day.

>> That's my point. Yeah, take rates 55,

20, 90. If you're making more money

doing this than other things,

>> I mean, a great example again just

>> because the algorith and maybe you can

speak to the the quality of the

algorithm and the ads placement. You

come from the ads business. You're a

double click.

>> Yeah.

>> How good YouTube's ad placement and ad

quality is relative to other platforms

and how that actually increases.

>> Yeah. I mean, I think I think what I'd

say on that is it's it's really it's two

things. One is, you know, obviously we

invest very heavily in making it so that

the advertising you see, whether you're

watching YouTube on a television screen

or on your phones or or your laptops is

relevant. It's targeted. The creative

formats are there. We are a platform

that caters to advertisers that are

brand advertisers, brand builders as

well as, you know, direct response. And

so that is a big area of investment. But

the reason why from and I spend a lot of

time talking to advertisers why they're

all so excited about the ROI is that uh

the the engagement is differentiated and

that turns into ROI for advertisers. And

what I mean by that is if you go to

YouTube, you are really leaned in into

what you're watching. You are a Mr.

Beast superfan. You're a, you know,

Michelle Kari superfan. You are a name

your favorite creator super fan. And

that is a different type of engagement

that actually translates into different

ROI regardless of where your objectives

are in the marketing funnel. And that's

that's our secret sauce. That's where

that's where this $70 billion that we

pay out to the creator economy and all

these, you know, hundreds of thousands

of jobs that we create in the creator

ecosystem on a daily basis come from.

>> Let me uh just uplevel this in a more

general question. 10 years ago, 15 years

ago, the cable channels and you know,

the way that we consumed content was

largely live. You know, we would tune in

for shows and one of the byproducts of

that was national culture, right? There

would be these things that would enter

the zeitgeist and you we'd all talk

about it and we would be unified by it.

And on the plus side of all of this

infinite distribution is you get to

watch what you want. The downside of it

is there's really no connective thread

almost that we all talk about that's the

same. Um, how does YouTube view that

problem? Is it a problem? Like is there

a responsibility or are there things

that you can do to kind of make things

that are a little bit less on demand, a

little bit more,

you know, appointment viewing that kind

of builds identity and culture? Yeah, I

think it's I think it's a really

interesting question and again, you

know, the

one of the consequences of what you're

talking about visav the algorithm or

what have you is, you know, you you guys

open up your phones right now, that

YouTube feed of yours is going to look

like you, right? Like it really is about

what you're genuinely interested in and

and watching. And that does lead to it

can lead to that type of that

fragmentation that you're describing.

Having said that, you know, if you ask

um you know, someone a Gen Z or you

know, a millennial sort of what were the

top four or five sort of really big sort

of breakout pop culture trends. A lot of

them are actually an aggregation of a

lot of these types of things and you

know um they they could be trends that

might be not the most relevant to all of

us or this audience, but they are for a

particular sort of age group. And so we

do so the answer is that we do see a lot

of those sort of national and in many

cases because YouTube's a global

platform two billion people come to it

every single day there's enough

aggregation even amongst these sort of

niche areas where you do see some of

that. The other thing that I will say

about about um sort of how I think about

it is I do think that um live and sort

of like those water cooler type moments

are really important. you saw uh you

know you saw the biggest one of those

happen on YouTube just two days ago. Um

that Brazil game that Ari was mentioning

was on YouTube. Yeah.

>> And the reason why it was such such a

success I would argue is because of that

aperture what YouTube can obviously do

from a reach standpoint. But the other

reason and to the NFL's credit was you

guys saw how relevant we were trying to

make it for kind of this YouTube

generation. And again, you obviously saw

the integration with things like

Destroying and Mr. Beast in the actual

live stream of the game itself, but that

sort of creator engagement through the

lens of creators is something that

sports leagues are leading to, which is

sort of like what I describe as a new

water cooler moment.

>> What percent of watched media minutes do

you guys have? Do you think if you look

at all media broadcast movies?

>> I mean, you guys know we're we're we're

the number one streaming platform here

in the US. So I think the latest

Neielson's number was and we've been the

number one streamer in the US here for 2

years and I think the number the latest

Neielson number was I think something

about about roughly about 13 13 14% of

the of the TV watching audience. Um uh

but remember that number doesn't include

YouTube on mobile uh and so it's a

television number.

>> But to Ari's point do you see that

growing? Are people spending more time

consuming media because it's more

personalized, it's more engaging, and

they're finding perhaps more free time?

>> I mean, I I do I mean, look, our numbers

are growing. I think other streaming

platforms are growing. Other, you know,

mobile platforms are growing. I think if

you look at sort of the totality of sort

of human time, it's still sort of a

relatively, you know, small portion of

that. Um, yeah.

>> Let me shift gears um to a different

topic for a second. I think during co

there's a real sense that the censorship

was out of control on social media, not

just YouTube but Twitter, Facebook, all

of them. Uh if you question the efficacy

of vaccines or social distancing or even

on topics like the trans agenda or even

uh climate change, there was a risk that

you could be censored or shadowbanned or

demonetized. It feels like we've the

industry's kind of pulled back from that

and um things have opened up again and a

lot of that's I think due to what Elon

did in terms of um buying Twitter and

opening things back up. I guess my

question is has the industry actually

learned from that or is censorship just

on pause during the Trump years.

>> There's another fast get into it. Right.

I like it. That's why

>> Good question.

>> It's a great question. Yeah. Yeah, you

know, I I think that actually I'll just

say a couple things about that and one

of them will sound it's it's sort of

actually connecting the the dots between

the questions that you guys asked, which

is, you know, the way I answered David's

Dave's question is um

first of all, I think a lot of these

plat all of these platforms are are

actually pretty different, right? Like

what Twitter does is different than what

you know, some of the meta platforms do,

which of course is very different than

what YouTube does. And you could argue

um as witnessed from the rest of this

conversation that we probably have a lot

more similarity with you know a

streaming platform than we do with a

social media platform. So that that's

one point but I think it's an important

context into what I'm about to say. And

the reason I say that is because you

know 99% of what happens on YouTube is

all the creators that I talked about all

the podcasters you know the Taylor

Swifts of the world all the music.

Obviously music is our largest and you

know most important vertical for example

we're a music platform so that that is

like even during co that is where a lot

of the watch time on YouTube versus a

discourse that might be happening in a

social feed somewhere. Um that doesn't

mean that we don't have comments on our

videos and all that sort of piece which

is where some of this you know discourse

that you're alluding to David might have

happened. Um I I do think yeah I so I

think that at the highest level I do

think that there is something about the

fact that that was a very different

time. I remember kind of March, April of

2020 where like oh my god like do you

get this this way or is it this way or

mask or this or I mean I literally woke

up one day and there were like people

climbing uh 5G cell towers and falling

from cell towers because now it was like

you could literally get the thing from

cell towers. It sounds cell towers but

it sounds crazy uh today but that was

the nature of sort of the types of

things that were popping up.

>> So some lessons learned or regrets

there. Let me let me just finish. So So

that that's the context in which you

know we were having to sort of make some

of these decisions. Fast forward to

today like obviously in a completely

different world but just in terms of the

nature of the disease and all that sort

of a thing. So all of those sort of

policies that existed back then are

non-existent today. And it's my way of

answering your question of like well is

it a temporal thing or not? I would

argue that a lot of these sort of like

and by the way YouTube in particular was

ex was was criticized to an extreme

amount because of all the content that

we left up on the platform around you

know the Wuhan virus controversy around

like you know whatever um all sorts of

other things that we were leaving up

that other places were were acting

differently on and so we got beat up a

lot sort of from one side of the

spectrum then Um, and I think that our

approach really just has to be

flexible to the environment in the

context of it. I think we're always

going to get criticized by being an open

platform. There's a lot of magic that

happens because of the open platform.

All these amazing creators wouldn't

exist if we didn't have an open platform

and we didn't stand for for free speech.

But there's also a lot of

>> Hold I want to follow up on this if I

may. There there are two categories that

I um I have in my feed because of the

algorithm. firearms and uh poker. Both

of those groups of creators are um a

little bit up in arms uh no pun intended

because they are being demonetized. So,

how do you make a decision on who's

allowed to earn and who's not allowed to

earn uh and be part of the ad network?

Poker folks and people who do firearm

safety and and firearm training uh and

best practices, they're demonetized um

and they're complaining about it now.

How do you make those kind of decisions?

Um, a lot of them are incredibly

successful creators on our platform,

Jason,

>> but not monetized.

>> No, some of them are monetized as well.

So, we we do have a clear set of rules

and we've had these for a long time in

terms of sales of firearms and those

types of things. And obviously, there's

there's legal frameworks and all those

types of things around it. But I think,

you know, in terms of

firearms community and learning about

firearms and safety, which obviously is

an important thing, especially for for

young people, um we're one of the

largest places where those audiences

exist, as well as monetization of that

type of content. Now the balance and you

know obviously and some of this comes

from um you know experts that we've

worked with in that vertical itself

around something might be appropriate

for an adult user of that type of

content that may not be appropriate for

a child and those types of things. So

there's a lot of nuance behind it, but

the

>> poker I don't I mean are we like there's

probably something around

>> sports gambling legality and all that

sort of stuff but generally speaking as

you guys know

>> there's an enormous amount of poker

content that's incredibly successful in

our platform is back to what Chimath was

saying which is like whatever niche

there is out there however big or

however small you're going to find a set

of creators that are just as passionate

about it as as you are. I think the

interesting question is how do you

organize yourself across all the

different countries in you're in and the

scale that you're at to deal with the

cultural nuances of every different

country and then to deal with the laws

of every different country and then to

deal as David said sometimes the

vicissitudes

of social policy in every country. How

do you deal with that organizationally?

Like what does that actually look like?

>> Yeah, it's the part that turns my hair

hair white. But uh look I think part of

it I say this to my team all the time

which is

it is a challenge right because we but I

think it's a challenge that honestly

like I view it as a bit of a privilege

in the sense that it wouldn't be

important if we weren't such an

important place especially for young

people to uh connect get information

entertain themselves learning we're the

largest learning platform uh in the

world. We know that obviously um just

given all the use cases and the watch

time etc. And so

at least from my standpoint I try to be

as global as we possibly can in terms of

principles. You know one of the things

that I always say about um YouTube is

like you know our northstar principle

and you know uh has always been um give

everyone a voice and show them the

world. That's our mission statement. Uh

it stands for freedom of expression,

freedom of speech. We are, you know, an

American company and that that notion

that sort of value of freedom of spee

speech is core to our ethos and we

really do try to start with that as a

global position. Having said that,

you're right like there is an enormous

patchwork of legislation and regulation

that exists in every country.

>> Are there people that are writing

policies that then some folks just have

to understand and they're manually

trying to react to here's how we deal

with this issue in India. here's how we

deal with this issue in Brazil. Here's

how we deal with it in France.

>> Yeah. I mean, look, the answer is um

>> or is it algorithmic or is it a

combination?

>> It's it's always some combination

because you know the scale of YouTube is

you know hundreds of hours of content is

uploaded to YouTube every single minute

of every single day. Um we want to be um

as core to that north star as possible.

You know, frankly, there's there's

situations where we have to push back on

that that core uh push back on sort of

what might be um an encroachment on that

sort of a principle. Having said that,

we also of course, you know, have to

legally operate in all of these

countries just like any other platform.

>> There's three products, Neil, I'm super

obsessed with and I just would love to

get your your take on them in terms of

priorities for you. YouTube TV,

unbelievable.

>> Unbelievable. YouTube Red.

>> That is a great product.

>> Uh YouTube Red, which I think is YouTube

Premium taking the ads off.

Unbelievable. And then I think a sleeper

is you've kind of built in Patreon like

functionality subscriptions. So maybe

you can walk us through the footprint of

each of those and the prioritization of

those because they do seem to have had a

a significant impact on engagement and

how people look at the platform.

>> Yeah. No, and I'm super proud of all

three of those products. as a product

guy myself, like that's that's the fun

part of the job is actually building all

of these amazing products and um uh you

know the the their origin story on

YouTube TV. I I'm a sports nut. I'm like

I'm and actually the the people on my

team, a lot of them who've been involved

with YouTube TV since the very early

days are also big sports guys and I'm

also a news junkie and that's the core

use case of YouTube TV in many ways. if

you think about sort of the the features

that we built, multiv- view, key plays,

even some of the fantasy integrations

that you see. So, that's the lens

through which you should think about how

we're going to continue to develop that

product. Uh, and the thought and the

question I would always get is like,

well, why are you guys doing this? Like,

look at what's happening to that part of

the the the the paid ecosystem, right?

Like, why are you diving into this thing

that's like this sort of like, you know,

shrinking shrinking thing? And our

thought was like, well, a lot of it has

to do with the fact that like

reinventing that whole experience from

the standpoint of a fan or a consumer.

And so that's the YouTube TV um origin

and sort of where it's going. The one

thing that you should, you know, pay

attention to is um something that we

call prime time channels in YouTube,

which is

a lot of those same sort of linear

channels or sort of traditional media

channels, but that you can buy all a

cart in the main YouTube app.

>> Uh and so that that there's connectivity

between those two products.

>> Yeah, I was wondering when that would

happen because for me it's just CNBC. I

want to have it inside of YouTube, but I

have to load it. And then when I travel,

it's always like, "Oh, what region are

you in?" Premium, how many premium

subscribers are there now? How is that

growing? How does that affect the ad

business? Because for me, the ads are

death. I just I need my time back. So,

how do you think about that?

>> Yeah. Um I do think that for our

business um advertising is going to

remain ha is today and will remain the

predominant way through which we

monetize on behalf of creators. That 70

billion number that I mentioned most of

it comes from ads and the reason is

because you know at at a fundamental

level we are a platform of scale two

billion two billion people come to it

every single day. Having said that, like

giving consumer choice, you know,

uninterrupted experience uh is

important. There's about 125 million uh

subscribers

um 25 million

>> pay uh YouTube premium.

>> Amazing.

>> How does that money get split with the

creators? So, if I'm watching Mr. Beast

without ads, how do you

>> There there's there's a kind of roughly

sort of engagement watchtime type

calculation.

>> Is TV basically the biggest cable

subscriber base equivalent?

Are we are you um you know

>> where do you guys rank in cable

subscribers?

>> Actually, you know, it's interesting the

way that even the way you guys are

talking about it is like well that's

like your uninterrupted sort of TV

subscription tier, which is how I think

lots of people think about it.

>> The origin uh of YouTube Premium was

actually a music premium music

subscription service, right? It was like

called YouTube Music and Premium. And so

a lot of those 125 million subs are not

just people who are watching it just the

way that they would watch like you know

Netflix or Amazon without ads. There's a

lot of that but a lot of it is just

actually music fans too. Like people who

>> for whom their music service is actually

Spotify is YouTube right? Like where

they discover music where they listen to

you know watch their favorite videos is

YouTube. So how do you have like a

uninterrupted music service

>> when you have all these incredible AI

models all over the place? People will

be generating all kinds of content. Some

of that content could be news content,

topical content. You know, it could talk

about a vaccine. It could talk about

whatever. Do you guys feel you have a

responsibility to figure out whether

that's real or not? Do you think that's

the role of the actual creators? Do you

think it should be, you know, the CDC

should have a YouTube channel where they

watermark the stuff that they put out?

And then so like whose responsibility is

this going to be?

>> Yeah, I think

>> and how much of it is our responsibility

as a consumer? I mean, look, I think

that, um, here's how I think about it.

First, um,

with the growth of these AI enablement

tools, um, you're going to see that like

the distinction between like was it

completely AI generated, was it AI

assisted, etc. is going to be a

continuum. So, that's that's the first

piece. Um, and we're already seeing

that. We see that on YouTube obviously.

you know, you open up the YouTube app,

you hit that plus button, um you can

type in a text prompt and it will

generate a video for you using our VO

models, right? Um so that that is

already happening. One of the things

that we do um is um there is a label

that says that you know you know # AI

generated and um we will put that sort

we call it sort of front of the box. We

will literally put that on the video and

in some cases usually it's in the

metadata. Um that's obviously not

foolproof. Um, but I I think the way at

least from a principal standpoint, the

way I think about it is, you know,

YouTube has these, you know, community

guidelines. We try to be transparent

about them. We publish them on our

website. And I think that sort of like a

a priory distinction between, well, it

was AI generated, therefore it must be

violative versus not actually is not the

way to do it. Um, and it's really just

about giving as much transparency to the

users as possible.

Um, and then the other thing that's

really important is in the creator

business, in the creativ creativity

business, whether you're a Hollywood

celebrity or a YouTuber or or an artist,

the the thing that I hear over and over

that they really care about is their

likeness. And so if you're Taylor Swift,

it's your voice. If it's if you're, you

know, Marquez Brownley, it is your face

like your live. It's your

>> No, I mean it's there are people doing

live chimoth things to give Bitcoin away

and I send it to him and I report it

sometime.

>> I send it to Neil. I send it to Neil and

I'll tell you the AI slop issue is

getting bad.

>> Send it to me directly instead of

tagging me. Um the the

no the issue really is like um I'm a

Corvette fan and um the the incentive is

so perverse I've had to ban a bunch of

these channels that show me thumbnails

of this is the new Corvette, this is the

new prototype and it's AI slop and it's

obvious what they're doing is they're

trying to insert themselves into the

algorithm and then I just ban them. So

you do give control, but I do think

really labeling them is import I don't

want to put the burden on you to do

that. I think the labeling is one piece

but the the thing that I was going to

say is the other thing and we have a

track record of content ID which is

basically the rights management system

that you could argue basically created

that whole creator economy in the first

place YouTube success. It saved YouTube.

So content ID is think about that

metaphor as it applies to AI. Yeah.

>> Wonderful. So we are working on this

notion of I call it sort of likeness

detection where if it's a chimoth face

um the algorithm should be good enough

to actually detect that and then give

you a choice as to whether that should

come down

>> right

>> is that does that come down or you know

there might be some creators that choose

to monetize it and give so giving

creator we can take ownership of it

>> you can take ownership of it

>> so people take our clips make versions

of us as dogs or

>> and it for us it's not just words we

actually have a tracker record of doing

that because of something like content

ID.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, Neil Mo,

thanks for being here. Thanks, brother.

Appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.