YouTube chief business officer Robert Kyncl called the streaming service’s growth “astounding” and said he isn’t worried about the competition.
In fact, he believes there is enough business to go around for every streaming platform, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Facebook, which has recently placed a renewed priority on streaming content.
“YouTube is becoming more of a daily destination for people, with our daily users growing 50 percent,” said Kyncl told moderator and REDEF CEO Jason Hirschhorn Monday at TheGrill, TheWrap’s sixth annual Media Leadership Conference. “They are all astounding numbers.”
Kyncl, who oversees content, sales, marketing and operations at YouTube, said users uploaded 65 hours of video every single minute five years ago. Now, the platform experiences 400 hours of video content being uploaded every single minute. More than a billion people use YouTube every single month.
YouTube videos are easy to embed and share so it’s not uncommon for creators to thrive on social media, but Kyncl revealed that Facebook referrals account for less than 5 percent of its traffic. However, the executive wouldn’t disclose which social media platforms are YouTube’s top-three referral sources.
Despite the ever-growing and evolving space YouTube shares with a number of other companies that thrive off of views, Kyncl isn’t worried about clashing with any of them.
“We are playing in such an enormous space — it’s almost $200 billion a year — we can all grow within the next five to 10 years and not grow into each other,” Kyncl said.
Kyncl didn’t even hesitate to praise the other online video platforms while explaining what YouTube is on a mission to stand out from competitors.
“YouTube focuses on user integration and watch times,” Kyncl continued. “If we keep executing on these, then we will be fine. When you look at the space today, I am very impressed with what Hulu has done — I think [CEO] Mike Hopkins has done an incredible job.”