Robert Kyncl, head of content at YouTube, says customers now spend 50pc longer watching his company’s videos, and Google Preferred has driven revenues up 70pc for those taking part.
Speaking at the Code/Media conference in California this week, Kyncl explained how incorporating Google’s three-month-old service that allows advertisers to target the top 5pc of YouTube content with ads that cannot be skipped, is changing the game.
YouTube creators are seeing a jump of 50pc in revenues, however, those taking part in Google Preferred are far outstripping even that return.
“It’s been quite successful,” said Kyncl, who believes further growth in the online video industry is likely and that, despite increased competition from Facebook, Netflix and Amazon, YouTube won’t need to cede ground for other players to enter the field.
“There are only a couple of companies that are growing as fast as we are, on the scale that we are,” he said.
“We expected deceleration of the business, and it’s actually accelerating. And I believe that’s because we are playing in a US$200bn-US$400bn market, depending how you look at it. So if many of the internet companies grow five times in size, we won’t even touch each other.”
YouTube video via Shutterstock
