YouTube growing fast, Shorts gets 3.5 bn daily views: Sundar Pichai

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed that videos in the new YouTube Shorts player are receiving 3.5 billion daily views, and the company will bring it to more countries in 2021.

Shorts is a video-making app like TikTok where people can express themselves in 15 seconds or less.

During the Q4 2020 earning call with analysts late on Tuesday, Pichai said that at YouTube, the company is building products to help creators benefit from two important trends -- live video and short form video.

"More than 0.5 million channels live streamed on YouTube for the first time in 2020, from artists performing in their living rooms to churches moving their services online," Pichai informed.

"And videos in our new shorts player are receiving 3.5 billion daily views. We are looking forward to expanding shorts to more countries this year," he added.

YouTube ads brought in $6.89 billion in Q4, a 46 per cent jump from the same quarter last year.

Philipp Schindler, Chief Business Officer, said that the Direct Response business on YouTube was practically non-existent three years ago and now, it's one of our largest and fastest growing Ad offerings on YouTube.

"With 'TrueView For Action', we're actually making it easier for advertisers to unlock opportunities to reach audiences with video campaigns.

"And just to give you a few numbers, 60% of TrueView For Action customers are new to YouTube and we more than doubled the number of active advertisers using TrueView For Action in the first six months of 2020," Schindler informed.

Nearly 70 per cent of YouTube viewers say they bought a brand as a result of seeing it on YouTube.

YouTube Premium is providing additional revenue streams for music labels and publishers as well.

"In 2019, YouTube paid the music industry over $3 billion. We have over 30 million Music and Premium paid subscribers. We are now operating in over 95 countries. So members get a lot of extra benefits," Schindler said.

"In the US, we have over 100 million people that watch YouTube and YouTube TV on their TV screens each month".

Google-owned YouTube has paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies in the last three years, its CEO Susan Wojcicki revealed late last month.

--IANS

na/