The Millions and Millionaires on YouTube

What the channels with more than a million subscribers tell us about what India loves to watch on YouTube. Highlights of Satya Raghavan's recent presentation.

At vdonxt asia 2019, Satya Raghavan, director, YouTube, spoke about what India is watching on the platform - and trends therein. Here are the highlights of his presentation, which was followed by a chat with business journalist Shweta Mulki.

• Most video platforms have a monthly active user base. Others focus on daily active viewership. The ratio of daily active viewership to monthly active user ratio is what I call 'the crazy ratio'. For most platforms, 20 to 30 per cent of the people who come on a monthly basis actually end up coming onto the platform on a daily basis.

Satya Raghavan

• A whole lot of people are turning to YouTube for their daily spiritual fix. And content creators are tapping into this trend, by putting out not just individual videos but also by live streaming 24 by 7 devotional channels.

Shweta Mulki interviews Satya Raghavan
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• The content that kids are consuming is in the educational space - nursery rhymes, learning, stories.

• We always thought YouTube is for people who 'know it', but we're increasingly realising that people who're moving up in life/in their jobs and careers, use the platform to seek the information that can help them do so. People ostensibly use it to educate themselves and prepare for examinations. A lot of content created in cities is consumed by people in villages. Similarly, people across the world are learning authentic recipes through YouTube. This is what we call 'the everywhere' phenomena.

• The first 100 million consumers came to the platform for their entertainment fix. The next 100 million came for information. And the next 100 million came to YouTube to educate themselves.

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• Content has become more interesting, many sub-verticals have emerged, beyond and within the basic types of content on YouTube, namely TV content, movies, music, educational content, beauty, comedy, news, food and tech.

• India is tech-crazy in every language. There's a lot of tech related content in Indian languages. In fact, the 'language of YouTube' in India in your mother tongue - there's content in whatever language you speak. And different genres of the content are popular in different Indian languages, for example webseries in Marathi versus music, food and comedy related content in Punjabi.

• Speaking of languages, there are many large channels that teach people English.

• Previously, the internet was the preserve of a select few. But with video, you don't need to have information about information or know a specific language. Disintermediation of information in video format has made it so easy for content to cut across different markets and types of audiences.

• About 50-70 per cent of the content that gets consumed from any channel on YouTube, happens due to the algorithms we have in place.

• On YouTube, content for someone will invariably be created by someone from the same cohort. Unlike other platforms where there are gate-keepers, YouTube is democratic.