A week after Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called YouTube a “straightforward direct competitor,” the platform’s managing director in France and South Europe Justine Ryst proved him right as she unpacked YouTube’s strategy in the content business and global reach.
Speaking at a fireside chat hosted at Series Mania in Lille, the Paris-based executive said YouTube paid out more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies between 2021 and 2025. That figure outpaces Netflix’s estimated $79.5 billion in cash content spending over the same period. She said the comparison with Netflix highlights YouTube’s growing weight in the global content economy, even as it stops short of acting as a conventional commissioner. “YouTube doesn’t buy upfront and doesn’t commission content as a broadcaster or streaming platform do, but we pay back more than half of our revenue to the right owners who are behind the YouTube channels,” she said.
She said YouTube tried to commission content like streamers in the past when it launched YouTube Red and abandoned it. “We completely failed,” she said candidly. “We started to acquire some content, but when you go into that direction, first of all, it’s a different job. You have to have completely different skills, and then you have to propose a grid with new formats every month, every week, every day, every hour.”
The session was introduced by a presentation by Omdia, which revealed that while Netflix is bound to remain the subscription leader for years to come, Youtube’s global audience (of monthly active users) is expected to be three times bigger by 2030. The study also showed that in France, Netflix edges YouTube as first choice of video service by a thin margin (18% and 12%, respectively). Boasting more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, YouTube also overlaps massively with broadcaster audiences in several territories, especially in France (with 51%). YouTube Premium, meanwhile, has 100 million worldwide subscribers.
During her chat at Series Mania, Ryst sought to soothe concerns from traditional players as she said “YouTube isn’t here to replace television” and is the “best ally to the television industry… the broadcasters and the producers.”
She said “users themselves have chosen these different journeys or different ways of
consumption. Our job, and this is the primary mission of YouTube, is give the best user
experience and business model.” She went on to talk about different collaborations with pay TV and broadcasters across Europe, like Canal+ and France Televisions in France and the BBC in the U.K.
“When France Télévisions goes on YouTube, it’s to get the (demos) under 30 years old below versus
its average audience on linear television,” she said. The exec also pointed out YouTube was working with ratings company Mediametrie in several countries, including France. “You can see exactly the
complementarity of audiences,” she said.
She said it made sense for the BBC to strike a partnership with YouTube “because when you’re a public service broadcaster, your main mission is to address the widest possible audience.”
On the pay-TV side, she said Canal+ is using YouTube to push its free-to-air content. “They have a very smart strategy of putting the first episodes of some original series like ‘Validé’ on YouTube, and then it invites you to go on the paid subscription,” she said, pointing that “YouTube is bringing 7% of Canal+’s subscribers,” Ryst said the platform has replicated the same model with Sky Italia and found that YouTube is contributing to 8.7% of the Sky Italia subs.
YouTube has also been diving into the micro-drama space through YouTube Shorts. Since launching five years ago, Ryst says it “has been expanding incredibly.” “It’s 200 billion daily views on Shorts every day and the users of Shorts have increased of 20% year-on-year during last quarter,” she pointed out. “A lot of producers or distributors of micro-dramas are using YouTube as their first showcase to then transition to their platform.”
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