YouTube saw robust growth in 2020-2021; progression will be similar

Creative entrepreneurs on YouTube contributed over Rs 10,000 crore to the Indian GDP in 2021, and supported the equivalent of 7.5 lakh full-time jobs in the country, the platform said at the Google for India event.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18’s Aishwarya Anand, Ajay Vidyasagar, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, Youtube shared the company's performance for 2022 and how YouTube is now transcending into a true economic value for creators.

Vidyasagar said, “This report, in partnership with Oxford Economics, was really computing our economic impact for the year 2021. We have actually seen very robust growth from 2020 to 2021. We genuinely believe that the progression will be similar.”

He further added, “What excites us is that YouTube's really been able to help democratise opportunity, help find storytellers, a home and a significant audience; what also excites us is that it's now beginning to translate into true economic value. When that whole flywheel of someone being able to find a community of users, and their-on find real economic upside that's truly the magical sweet spot that we wanted to help find for our creators. And then we are truly delighted that that's something that's beginning to come together.”

On monetising Shorts, he said that the entire bundle of shorts content wasn't monetised till now and monetisation will start from the first quarter of next year.

He added, “The goal here was to ensure that we have robust usage data for our creators and for our advertisers. Now we believe we have reached a point where we feel comfortable in enabling. Come 2023, we will roll out monetisation on all of our short-form content, along with all the monetisation that we already have. We believe that this is going to be the first real scaled opportunity for short form creators in any part of the world to start seeing transparent, robust and predictable advertising revenue flow through and so these early days.”

Youtube has launched 'courses' on its platform. Vidyasagar said, “India is among the first markets where it's launching, we are going to launch it in the United States, South Korea, and India. India is a country that's very hungry for content that is learning and helping. That's based on learning and helpfulness and users in India are clearly showing an extraordinary desire to continuously uplift themselves. YouTube's being seen as an amazing place to go and find content that is helpful to them to learn more.”

He added, “Courses, we believe, will help this user find this content in a more systematic program manner, without them having to find it on an individual basis, this is now going to be then that is going to allow a creator or a content creator, to now allow that content to be found, without too much of a hassle without the user having to search for it independently.”