When UK measurement body Barb released its first set of viewership data for individual YouTube channels on TV sets last week, the findings sparked a big reaction across the industry.
There’s been a growing narrative over the past few years, pushed by YouTube itself, of YouTube becoming “the new television” (in CEO Neal Mohan’s words). While a lot of the weight behind this story has come from data out of the US market, with Nielsen’s ‘Gauge’ reports consistently showing YouTube to be the most viewed streaming service on TV sets in America, there has been data in other countries to back up this notion too. In the second quarter of this year, Barb’s own data shows that TV sets accounted for 43 percent of all in-home, WiFi-based YouTube viewing.
In the eyes of some observers, Barb’s new channel-level data runs counter to this narrative. Out of the top 20 most viewed channels measured by Barb, over half were kids channels — the likes of Peppa Pig, Bluey, and Moonbug. And the reach for these channels individually is quite low compared to major TV shows. MrBeast, arguably the current face of YouTube, drew a weekly UK TV audience of less than 360,000 according to Barb’s figures, a figure which raised some eyebrows.
But Richard Brant, Senior Director of Advanced TV, UK and International at Vevo, argues that some of the reaction in the wake of the release has been somewhat overblown. “I think a lot of commentators have jumped on the data, but not really appreciated a lot of the nuance that’s involved in the medium, and how it’s consumed versus broadcast programming,” he told VideoWeek.
Apples to oranges comparisons
Vevo sits at an interesting intersection when it comes to the debate around YouTube’s role in the living room. YouTube is a major part of the company’s distribution strategy, while content-wise, it sits firmly in the TV world. Music videos started life on TV after all, and Vevo is signed up to TV marketing body Thinkbox in the UK.
Brant says he welcomes Barb’s move to start measuring individual YouTube channels on TV sets. “We’re big supporters of what Barb does, and we think what they’re doing should be applauded,” he said. “They’re bringing transparency, and helping the industry understand audience behaviour on YouTube.”
But he says that drawing direct comparisons between viewing figures for broadcast TV shows and individual YouTube channels means comparing apples to oranges.
For a start, YouTube isn’t typically looking to deliver the same mass simultaneous reach for advertisers which linear TV channels specialise in. “On YouTube, we’re looking at more on-demand content than we are broadcast content,” he said. “Broadcast is very much about delivering to the masses, but these popular YouTube channels are always cumulative in the ways they pick up views. And I think comparing YouTube to linear TV misses the point a bit in terms of how YouTube is bought. YouTube is good at picking up cumulative reach across thousands of channels. Some of those 200 channels measured by Barb will be part of that cumulative reach.”
There’s also the fact that the 200 channels measured by Barb feature a range of content, not all of which fits the traditional TV mould. “When you look at those 200 channels, not all of them would be broadcastable, so the risk is that people start comparing things where the quality isn’t the same,” said Brant. “We’ve been speaking for a good few years now about the effect of quality, and the regulation which TV content has gone through. They’re different moments, there are different mindsets in terms of how you’re watching it, not all impressions are equal.”
A mindset shift
Again, Brant emphasised that Barb’s initial measurement of YouTube channel viewership is a good starting point. But he said that a helpful next step might be to group together viewing for TV-like content, perhaps under its own fit-for-TV definition, to create more of a like-for-like comparison.
Currently, broadcasters’ own content watched through YouTube isn’t included in this new measure, as it’s already counted under the broadcasters’ own viewership data. And not all broadcast-quality content available on YouTube sits within Barb’s list of 200 channels. Importantly for Vevo, automatic content recognition technology, which Barb uses to measure YouTube viewing, doesn’t work for music content due to its reliance on audio.
A measure which demonstrates viewership for all TV-quality content on YouTube could therefore give buyers a better understanding of how to plan a TV campaign, which would be particularly helpful in navigating changing consumer consumption habits.
The aim, Brant says, wouldn’t be to tell buyers what should or shouldn’t be included in their TV buys: that’s ultimately up to them. But grouping together all content which definitely fits the definition of TV and upholds buyers’ expectations around things like transparency, editorial quality, and brand safety, would give buyers a helpful starting baseline to work from.
This might require a bit of a mindset shift away from the current ‘Google vs broadcasters’ mentality which exists in parts of the industry. “The way that we’re arguing about this in public frames it as ‘Google versus’, whereas actually broadcasters are using YouTube as a distribution platform,” said Brant. “So instead of having that argument, I think it’s more about asking how we can group that quality which does exist on YouTube together. YouTube has branding opportunities as well as long-tail opportunities […] but if you’re going to directly compare it with a TV-quality environment, it feels right that you should pick the TV-quality content that exists on YouTube.”
Follow VideoWeek on LinkedIn.
