 Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer, YouTube 
Tom Ryan, CEO, Streaming, Paramount Global
Moderator: Terri Burns, Partner, GV


Brainstorm Tech 2022: New Models In Streaming 

Conferences

Brainstorm Tech 2022: New Models In Streaming 


neal Tom we're very excited to have you both here today. Thanks for being here. Let's go ahead and jump straight in. So maybe we can start with you tom I want to just level set a little bit and hear from both of you, your general interest and the importance of streaming today. Can you speak to that a little bit just to kick us off? Yeah, sure. Great to be here. Um streaming for us is a top priority at paramount Global. Uh we uh see streaming certainly as the future of television, I think that's clear. Um and so we've been investing very heavily in both are free and are paid streaming ecosystem. So we've got with a differentiated uh streaming strategy which really spans free pay and ad supported, which we think is going to be the future of streaming um full stop for the entire industry over time With Pluto TV, which is a company I co founded and launched in 2014, we've got the leader in the free, ad supported streaming TV or fast category. So that is basically hundreds of channels, thousands of TV shows and movies on demand, all delivered for free. Um and with paramount plus, which we launched uh last year we've got a fast growing paid streaming service which essentially delivers um live news, um live sports, a mountain of entertainment, um all for a very attractive price point, which we think is really important in today's economic environment. So you can have paramount plus for 9 99 without ads, but you can have it with for 4 99 with ads And we think advertising is a big part of the streaming future, as we're starting to see with lots of different um paid services, adopting an ad supported tier. I definitely want to spend some time digging into revenue as how you both think about that, but Neil do you want to jump in first? Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of of what what tom said and you know, as the, as the Youtube guy here, uh it's no secret that streaming is something that is uh you know, near and dear to my heart, it's something that has been core to our business for um uh for a long time. And I think it's uh it's there's 22 aspects of it that I think are what make it so powerful. One is the, this this kind of vibrancy of streaming creates enormous opportunity, enormous choice for all of us as consumers, like, I think that's obvious to everybody here in the audience, We all experience that as consumers ourselves. But the other aspect that I think is even more exciting is it creates uh an incredible set of opportunities for creators and creators writ large, not just, you know, kind of traditional media creators, But youtubers, you know, tens of millions of them all over the world would not have been able to thrive if it wasn't for streaming platforms today, YouTube, uh you know, is um gets a reach of about 230 million users across the us on a monthly basis. And that happens for two reasons, I would argue related to what I just said the first is this connection between all of us as consumers and creators, you come to Youtube because there's content that you love, there's creators that you love to follow and connect with, not just to watch, but to interact with. And then the second aspect, of course is just pushing the frontiers in terms of innovation, what we've been able to do on the streaming platforms. So there's of course are our main app, but there's Youtube in the living room, which is our largest and fastest growing screen now in the US, there's Youtube kids, there's Youtube music and of course there's Youtube tv. So all of that innovation, all of that connectivity between creators and fans is just what makes streaming super, super exciting for me. I really want to drill down on this idea of just content creation in general. Um Obviously there's there's UGC content across Youtube user generated? Uh Yes, exactly, user generated content. Um and then there's produced content when you think about paramount Plus Youtube Tv, how do you both think about content creation in general and what it really means to create the next frontier of entertainment. Uh well at paramount, we're a professionally produced content business for streaming, so whether it be for Pluto Tv, which is really a third party content service where we have hundreds of content partners who provide us with content so that we can program these channels, um, or whether it's paramount plus where we are primarily a first party content service, leveraging all of uh, paramount's brands and franchises from Nickelodeon to cbs to uh, comedy Central to MTV and a bunch of originals that we create, we're really in the professionally produced premium content business, whether that be third party or first party. Uh, so, you know, youtube, our endemic creators as unitary are front and center to everything that we do. We have millions of them all over the world. Uh, and what I said before, uh, in my, in my, in the, in your previous question, I think really applies here, of course, we have all kinds of content on our platform. We partner with uh, programming partners on a regular basis, paramount um, many others, but our, um, our lifeblood is, are endemic creators are Youtubers and um, uh, they're pretty amazing. And I think the power of an open platform really shows, uh, in what they've been able to accomplish on Youtube because there are no gatekeepers because there's nobody who's telling these creators on Youtube that hey, you know what your, your accent is not quite right or you don't have the right skin color or you're not tall enough short enough, what have you or you're from the wrong part of the world, none of that exists. And these creators who otherwise would have had to face all of these hurdles now can come onto Youtube, build an audience all over the world, not just in their countries and then build a business on it. And I think that that's what is super, super exciting to me just by way of sort of quick, quick anecdote, you know, Mr Beast, I think most of you are familiar with one of the largest creators on Youtube, he's got 100 million followers. If Mr Beast was his own streaming channel, he'd be larger than the next three streaming channels combined. And so that is sort of the power of the reach of these Youtubers, how incredibly large their followings are and how engaged those subscribers are to their content. I want to open up questions to the audience in just a moment to start getting your questions ready, but first let's drill down a little bit into how we think about new models that will keep consumers happy and of course revenue coming in. So you both have touched on it a little bit, there are ad based tiers, there are paid tiers on, on both of your platforms. How do you think about that today? And how do you think that these new models might evolve in the future? Maybe you can start with you tom Yeah, so I mean I think it's uh it's clear that you want to provide the most flexibility to consumers so that you can um have a service, you can have a variety of services that actually meet consumers where they are. Um And so having a free price point um for Pluto Tv is great for paramount plus again we've got a premium without add uh price point, but then we've also got an ad supported price point, the collection of those different um means of meeting the customer, allow us to have the greatest addressable number of subscribers or users as well as the greatest revenue potential. So we think that that's really a winning strategy and that's going to continue to evolve into the future. Yeah, I would say, I mean um as you all know, our primary business is an ad supported one. Uh Youtube has, you know, two billion users all over the world. Uh that is an attractive platform for advertisers to be able to connect with their prospective consumers, existing consumers right? When those consumers are engaged very lean forward with their favorite creators on Youtube, that is sort of the core value proposition of our ads business. And that's why it's kind of the essence of everything that we do at Youtube, but of course, Uh we want to have a variety of options, not just for our viewers but also for our creators. And so we've invested very heavily in subscription offerings. Uh we have two of them, YouTube premium, which is our music oriented subscription offering now has over 50 million subscribers worldwide, that number continues to grow. And there the value proposition is simple, which is uh, an incredible music listening experience, an incredible Youtube experience without ads, without um, uh, with background play with offline play. Uh, and we have a uh, subscription streaming product of course called Youtube Tv and that is a product that we've invested in very heavily with the core, core purpose of uh really just innovating on the product and we work very closely with partners to make sure that we have the best content on the platform as well. And as a result of that investment, uh today I can announce that we crossed the five million subscriber and trial or threshold um, at Youtube tv. The business continues to grow and all of that is through the hard work of our product and engineering teams, all of our partners and so really excited about that subscription business as well. So for Youtube, it really is a combination of a Vod vod. We also have many other direct consumer uh, ways for creators to generate revenue in our platform, whether it's channel memberships, uh, things like super chat, super stickers, other ways for fans and creators to engage and create sort of that creative economy. Uh, and as a result, we've paid out, you know, tens of billions of dollars to creators over the course of years across our platform, all over the world. Five million special. We're very excited about that and I just like to add to, it may be obvious to uh an audience like this, but you know, today consumers are really creating their own bundles, they're no longer um getting um their television from one monolithic tv provider. And so it's important to have this flexibility so that, you know, people can actually have that custom created bundle of video or tv content that they're looking to watch um specific to them and they change what that looks like um you know, quarter by quarter. And so what was 1 to 2 paid services a few years ago when I was building a free ad supported service service entirely has now become five in the US people are demonstrating that they're paying for more subscription services, but they still want to complement that with a free offering. Um and so that's why it's so important to have this flexibility. Yeah, the customization piece of, of how we all consume this content, I think is really interesting how folks choose to bundle it. It's all about consumer choice at the end of the day, I think that's super exciting, 100%. Let's go to the audience, We have one question over there, can you state your name, company and the question please? Hi, I'm john Miller Ceo of demo and this may be you sort of answered this question a little bit, but you know, from a pure consumer perspective, like I really want to watch Ted Lasso or I really wanna watch Yellowstone or I really want to watch we crashed and I end up with like a new subscription every time and then I wanna watch the World series and then I've got another, you know, subscription I've got to add. So my question is, how do you see this kind of coming together? And what do you see the consumers doing? Are they, are they kind of moving to their own custom bundles? And how do they do that? And where do you see the eyeballs shifting to create these customized or flexible options from a consumer perspective? Uh I think to to start, I mean today, yes, consumers are creating their own bundles. That does mean that you have a set of subscriptions and you may change those out from time to time. I think for our part we're also trying to make that easier by bundling our services together so you can get paramount plus and showtime for example, um at a discounted price um where, where we offer that but in the future I think that there will be um and there's already services that are trying to do this at a sort of a meta level or at a at a sort of an aggregation level on the device side um abilities to make recommendations that will suit your taste and allow you to subscribe but it still results in subscribing to some more services. Whether those services will be combined over time, I think remains to be seen. But we're at this point bundling to try to solve that problem. I would say that in the near term, I think you're gonna see the entire range, you're gonna see existing bundles, there's gonna be innovation on top of those bundles. Youtube tv is a version of a bundle that has a lot of this product innovation on top of it, right? You know, multi screen, you know, DVR on the cloud, google personalization, all of that sort of stuff. So I think you're going to see lots of that innovation. I think you're going to see more and more subscription unbundle ng also happening. And then I think you're gonna continue to see uh the extraordinary growth of sort of everything on the other side of the spectrum. Keep in mind that if you're a young person today, you know, maybe almost all of your consumption is none of these things. It's actually, you know, a lot of the other platforms that are out there, whether it's, you know, your set of favorite Youtubers or your, you know, other platforms that you might be consuming video content on as well. And I think that, that, that spectrum will exist in the near term and I think it's really gonna get driven what I buy, what I was saying before, which is consumers are gonna vote with their feet. I think we have one other question up here, Hi, my name is Kirsten wahlberg, I sit on the board of epidemic sound, a company that soundtracks a lot of the creators that are playing on youtube and many other platforms. You talked in the opening about sort of the north America or the american penetration but growth globally, I'd be interested in more specific perspectives on which areas globally are growing fastest and what are the factors you think they're driving that? Yeah, so I think in terms of our business, the largest and fastest growing countries for us are countries like Indonesia, India all over asia for example, that shouldn't shouldn't be a surprise given the population, given the change in the underlying infrastructure, data plans, availability of you know, mobile devices, basically how consumers, they're sort of skipping a generation in terms of access to that type of content. Uh and so that's where we see extraordinary growth. Um and I would say that the growth so that that's one aspect. But other parts of the world are are also growing. You know, lots and lots of growth outside of north America and western europe is sort of the way that I would, I would put it in a nutshell. And what I would say is really exciting from an innovation standpoint is it's not just about user growth on products that are built here for example and then sort of exported around the world. A lot of the product, innovation, new business models, new ideas, new ways for creators to actually connect with their fans are emerging out a lot of those parts of the world and coming here. So for example shopping is a great example of that the way that influence or driven shopping happens in a lot of those markets driven by you know youtube creators but creators on other platforms I would say is ahead of the curve in terms of where we are North America western europe. And I think that's uh that's super exciting to see as well. So truly global. Uh Not just the most uh users but the fastest growing as well outside of outside of kind of traditional north american market. The other question Time for one more over here. Okay great. Thanks a lot. So um enjoyed the conversation Vicky huff with P. W. C. My question is more on the creator side and what trends you're seeing emerging going off of your last comment um whether it's you know, a lot of Youtubers are in gaming, right? And maybe N. F. T. S. Or things of that nature, What are the trends? Do you see anything that's starting to clearly evolve for your younger consumers that you think will go mainstream over the next couple of years? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean I think as you all know uh the Youtube platform does skew young. Uh and so a lot of the trends we see are trends that are popular amongst that cohort, the biggest one by far I would call out a short form video. Um, and so we have a product on Youtube called Youtube shorts. It's about, you know, mobile created vertically oriented, relatively short video content as you all know, there's other platforms that do that as well. Um and that's one of our fastest growing formats and we have creators that focus just on Youtube shorts, we have multi format creators that do traditional Youtube videos and shorts, Uh and we just passed um, you know, 1.5 billion logged in users of short content a month on our platform. And so the growth and adoption amongst users is there too, which of course keeps the creator flywheel going. So that's probably the biggest trend live is another one gaming you mentioned live streaming is a big thing for gamers. And then the third thing that I'll just mention is back to what I was saying, which is shopping. So you know, you come to Youtube to be entertained, but just like you go to a mall to be entertained and you might purchase something along the way. Lots of those types of user journeys exist on Youtube as well. And I think that that creates Interesting product opportunities for all of us as consumers and viewers, but for the entire, but also for the entire creative set as well as future creators as well. We have 30 seconds left. I would want to know if you have any closing thoughts tom uh yeah, I just say that, you know, clearly we're in a global mega trend with streaming right now. We're still in the very early innings. And um, I think, you know, as we look out into the years ahead, um, in terms of video consumption, streaming is certainly going to become the primary business model um, for our industry. And so we're really, really excited about our growth and the future to come. 100% Neil Tom. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you. Thanks for having me.