The Relentless Rise of YouTube

‘Tragedy for traditional TV’ screamed the headline in The Times when it was revealed that YouTube had 51.9m viewers in the UK in December, a million more than all four BBC TV channels combined.

But we dug into that data – from Barb, the UK’s most trusted source of viewing figures – and it’s clear that ‘traditional’ TV is far from dead. There is something really significant happening with how we’re using YouTube, and we’ll get to that in a moment, but here’s why the stats don’t tell the whole story.

First, that headline figure is based on how many people watched content from each provider for three consecutive minutes on any type of device. Three minutes suits a platform like YouTube which majors on shorts, but you spend at least thirty minutes with a BBC show. Even the fifteen-minute figure sees the advantage swing decisively back to the BBC and other long-form content producers. Same if you only consider content viewed on the UK’s televisions: for now, at least.

The second point is that YouTube is a platform and not one of those content producers. People watch stuff on YouTube which just doesn’t compete with the BBC or Netflix on form or quality, even if it does compete for our time and attention. Live streams, for example. And some of YouTube’s content is made by those big producers and viewed on their channels there. The BBC has 16m YouTube subscribers, and BBC News has 19m. You can already get pretty much all the BBC news you need on YouTube, and a recent UK Government green paper asked whether the BBC should make even more of its content available there.

The comparison between YouTube and the broadcasters isn’t the important thing here, not least because such comparisons are difficult. Instead, what really interests us is how YouTube is evolving. It turns 20 this year. Many of us at Cameo are YouTube natives. Our younger team members grew up with the platform and are sticking with it. If you started watching YouTube in your mid-teens, you’re in your mid-30s now. You’re now a lot more attractive to advertisers, and the platform is cleverly evolving and maturing with its audience.

The most noticeable change has been the shift to watching YouTube on our televisions. A recent article in the Financial Times described YouTube as ‘the dominant force in US living rooms’. In the US in 2024 it was viewed more on TVs than on digital devices, and early last year it established a consistent lead in all TV streaming consumption there. The UK isn’t far behind: around 40 per cent of YouTube views are on TV sets now. While the media focus has been on the rapid growth and potentially attention-corrosive effects of YouTube shorts, the platform says that its long-form content has been ‘thriving’ too, reflective of its maturing demographic and how they’re choosing to watch.

It’s still unlikely that YouTube will make its own content directly. It has tried that a couple of times before, and retreated. And it just doesn’t have to. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan calls the platform’s independent creators ‘the new Hollywood’. Unlike the BBC or Netflix, YouTube doesn’t have to fund content up-front, or risk misjudging what we want to watch. And with nearly three billion active users, its scale means it can dominate without even trying. At Cameo we make podcasts, and place talent and spokespeople on existing podcasts. Guess which platform now dominates podcast consumption? Correct. Those who run the big content makers will be as envious of Neal’s business model as his viewing figures.

YouTube might not make content, but it will continue to acquire rights to properties whose appeal it can supercharge by giving open access to such a huge user base. In what one analyst described as a ‘holy crap’ moment, YouTube has secured exclusive rights to the Oscars from 2029. Audiences for the awards have declined to just a third of their mid-90s peak. With easy global access and YouTube’s creators interviewing old Hollywood’s stars on the red carpet, the event might once again get the eyeballs to match its glamour.

Our view? We’ve worked with those ‘traditional’ TV makers for years. We love the scale and quality and bravery of their content, and they’re very far from dead. Quite the reverse. But the context in which they operate is getting more complex, and YouTube’s growth reflects a deeper generational shift.