YouTube’s success is “inextricably intertwined” to the success of its content creators, according to Kim Larson, the company’s global managing director and head of creators.
Larson made the comment while speaking at the 2024 Power Women Summit in Los Angeles on Tuesday. She was joined onstage by YouTuber Michelle Khare for the panel “Her Platform, Her Rules: Execs Leading the Creator Revolution,” presented by Whalar, which was moderated by Jo Cronk, the North American president of Whalar.
Khare has more than 4.8 million subscribers on the platform. Her mission, she said, is a simple but noble one: “educate, entertain and inspire.” She’s done that via her trademark “challenge” videos, where she attempts to become a blackbelt in Taekwondo in 90 days or trains to be a Secret Service member, among other videos — something that’s helped her earn the nickname “YouTube’s daredevil.”
During TheWrap panel, Khare said YouTube remains the go-to place for new creators because the barriers to entry are so low; there is no Hollywood meeting where she has to pitch a show, bring her agent and a pitch deck, nor cross her fingers that someone will approve her idea.
“I don’t know if what we’re creating now would have been possible in the traditional studio system, and I think it’s really special to get to make something where the only barrier to entry is the upload button,” Khare shared.
She said she started posting videos six years ago and was fortunate that through hard work and some luck, her channel started to resonate with fans. Khare added: “I want my work to be where it can be the best story and seen by the most people.”
For her and millions of other creators, that place is YouTube. Larson pointed to some key figures to back up the claim: The Alphabet-owned video site has paid out $70 billion to creators in the past three years, she noted, and 3 million creators participate in the company’s Partner Program, where creators keep 55% of any ad revenue. On top of that, she said 1 billion hours of YouTube content is watched every single day on TVs.
Most importantly, though, Larson said aspiring creators should look to YouTube because the lines between “studio-like content” and “creator-like content” are “gone” in the minds of viewers. They simply want to watch something that appeals to them, no matter who made it.
“What we see is people don’t make the distinction between what is studio-like content versus what is creator-like content in our industry, and particularly if you’re a viewer, you don’t make that distinction anymore,” she explained.
Another sign of the lines erasing, Larson said, creators that receive a majority of their watchtime on the living room screen has increased more than 400% in the last three years. The gap between movies, shows and YouTube videos in the audience’s mind is getting increasingly narrow.
Larson’s belief in the symbiotic relationship between YouTube and its creators came after the company recently reported its second best quarterly revenue ever. YouTube reported $8.92 billion in Q3 sales, falling just short of the record-setting $9.2 billion the company reported during the holiday quarter of 2023.
Something else that stood out from Alphabet’s recent earnings report: YouTube’s total ads and subscription revenues surpassed $50 billion over the past four quarters for the first time. For comparison, Netflix reported $37.5 billion in sales during that same period.
Later in the panel, Khare pushed back on the notion that because short-form video apps like TikTok and Instagram are popular, that Millennials and Gen Z’ers have turned away from content with more normal runtimes. Her videos routinely run between 20 and 40 minutes, and her video on learning Taekwondo was an hour and 15 minutes long. As such, she sees YouTube as a home for short, medium and long-form content to thrive.
“This sense that younger generations have no attention span — and I actually totally disagree. I just think that they know if they don’t like something, they can find something better,” Khare said. “In fact, like this taekwondo project we did, it’s a 75-minute piece, and the largest demographic of viewers was 18 to 24. So I don’t think that younger generations have an attention span issue. I think it’s on us as artists and creators to give them something that matters and is relevant.”
Looking ahead, Khare said anyone in the PWS crowd who wanted to start making content should do it on YouTube because the site won’t interfere with their work.
“I think freedom and democracy with art is such a special privilege,” she concluded.
TheWrap’s Power Women Summit is the essential gathering of the most influential women across entertainment and media. The event aims to inspire and empower women across the landscape of their professional careers and personal lives. With the theme, “Aspire,” this year’s PWS provides one day of keynotes, panels, workshops and networking. For more information visit thewrap.com/pws. For all of TheWrap’s Power Women Summit 2024 coverage, click here.
