At YouTube Brandcast, Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube, spoke about his childhood and moving between India and the US, saying that the experience helped him in forming his role as a storyteller from a very young age.

He noted that India is today YouTube's largest market and has over 11000 Indian channels with over a million subscribers.

"When I joined YouTube, there were only 11 channels with over 1 million subscribers," shared Mohan.

Talking about the trend of channels gaining popularity, he cited the examples of the channels run by Prajakta Kohli and Diljit Dosanjh.

According to Mohan, with the introduction of YT Shorts, YouTube is now getting trillions of views, and that engagement on shorts help add to subscriptions.

He further shared that YouTube has seen 4x growth on CTV in the last year.

Talking about new features, Mohan shared that YouTube has created a new play button for T-series

"With 271 million subscribers, T-series is the largest YouTube Channel in the world," he said.

At the event, YouTube launched two new options for advertisers - Pause Ads and Branded QR Code. Shekhar Khosla, VP-Marketing, Google India announced about it.

Among other announcements was the introduction of Animated Ads, Interactive Stickers and Interactive Gestures.

Khosla said that YouTube allows brands to engage with people with the right mindset. “Google AI has helped improve ROI in this respect,” said Khosla. He added that brands have been using YT CTV to engage deeply with users to drive results.

Turning to YT creators, Khosla mentioned that users want ads that are native, relatable and personal, thus paving the way for creators. He shared examples like Colgate Palmolive witnessing an 18% uplift in purchase intent using YT creators, Motorola leveraging YT masthead ads, and witnessing 36% incremental reach.

"YouTube is a platform that lets viewers engage deeply with all forms of content. On any device, mobile to TV, YT is the only platform where viewers, especially Gen z feel their time is well spent," he further said.