In what ended up being a serendipitous circumstance, exchange4media got to sit down with Ishan John Chatterjee, Director, YouTube, at the recent CTV Conference for an interview that will subsequently air on the video platform.
Given that globally people watch one billion hours of YouTube every single day, and 250 million Indians are expected to come online for the first time within the next year or so, our first question naturally was around if there is a specific strategy for them.
“If I take you back in time to when YouTube launched in India, that was 15 years ago in 2008, the Internet was not as ubiquitous as it is today. And if you look at YouTube's journey over this period through the mid 2010s when data prices started dropping, smartphones started to become more affordable, we saw Indians from all over the country across Tier Two, Tier Three towns across multiple languages join. Many of them were first-time Internet users coming to the platform,” noted Chatterjee.
And then in the last few years, even through the pandemic, the service saw even more users come in, in different use cases around Shorts on the one hand, Connected TV on the other hand. And so they've had over their journey in India so far, a lot of people, first-time Internet users coming onto the Internet and onto YouTube.
“And it's a long way of saying that we think that the proposition that we have for the first-time Internet user is very strong. If you take a step back, the proposition is we want to be the best place for video. So whether you are after a 15-second clip or a 15-minute VOD or a 15-hour live stream, it's available. You want content across different genres, across multiple languages, it's available. And I think that breadth of content, along with the experience that you see across device types, I think will help us serve the next 250 million that come on,” he said.
And given that India is a mobile-first market, so how much does the India strategy sort of impact the global strategy and vice versa?
“India is a really important market for YouTube. I think that goes without saying. And it's a hotbed of innovation for us because the market is so large and in many ways quite different from some of the other global markets that you're referencing,” said Chatterjee.
“I'll give you a specific example. YouTube Shorts was launched in India first. And the reason we did it is because of the scale of the market, and the number of mobile devices; we are a mobile-first country. And so as a company, we were very keen to see how we can launch the product here, make sure that it works here, get our product market fit right, and then scale it out across the rest of the world. So that's a good example of a really meaningful part of our product strategy, starting in India and then exporting to different parts of the world,” he added.
Chatterjee fuether said that for YouTube, the connected TV has been their fastest growing surface for the last five years. “It comes back to our very simple strategy of being the home of everything video.
And we think we have a strong proposition for each part of the stakeholder set of the flywheel that we consider. So, if you're a viewer, you have an incredible breadth of content across genres, across languages that work on connected TV.”
“If you are a creator, we're trying to build product features that help you succeed on connected TV. We're rethinking our core experiences so that creators can be successful, like how do you go and subscribe to something as simple as that? How do we make that easy for a creator to take to his or her audience? And then finally, for brands, we think it's a fantastic opportunity to reach audiences that have shifted already out of traditional TV and are more difficult to reach. And the more immersive experience gives you much greater emotional engagements,” added Chatterjee.
And speaking of emotional engagement, in a price-sensitive market like India, how is YouTube planning to push its Premium service?
“On YouTube, we want to make sure that we are building a product and a service that caters to everyone in the country. And AVOD and SVOD are two twin engines of growth that form a part of our broader monetization strategy. AVOD is absolutely the bedrock on which we build our service. And the reason why we think it's so important is it allows us to allow users to connect with creators and with partners and content without any barriers in terms of payment, etc. And so we are investing incredibly deeply in the AVOD experience itself,” said Chatterjee.
“So, if you think of YouTube and how it works across all kinds of mobile devices, very expensive ones, right to entry-level ones, all kinds of networks, whether it's even a 2G or 3G network right down to your broadband home, we are investing in the UX itself, we're modernizing the UX, we're launching specific features on AVOD. The most recent one that I've used is bump to hold where you can speed up the video. All that is within the AVOD experience.”
But Chatterjee also acknowledges that there's a cohort of users in India who are keen to pay for a feature-rich, ads-free experience. “And that uninterrupted experience itself, along with certain other features like background listening, downloading, and you also get a full service, a full music service with a huge music catalog within that same price proposition. That's a really great value proposition that we're offering.”
Chatterjee referred to an announcement made by the platform earlier in the year when it announced 100 million subscribers on YouTube Premium. “So, it's an area that we're going to continue to invest in. But in India, I think that striking that balance is going to be a core part of our strategy.”
And given the central role of India in YouTube’s journey, when are we getting YouTube TV? “Look, we don't have any specifics to announce on YouTube TV just yet. But suffice to say India is an important market. We're always looking for opportunities to serve our customers, our creators, and advertisers better. So watch this space.”
