Lucas Watson is vice-president, global sales and marketing, at YouTube. The video-sharing website has steadily grown its user base in India (now 25 million per month), making it an attractive proposition for advertisers. Companies such as Airtel, Vodafone, Coca-Cola and even Ford had tapped YouTube before going for television advertising. In an interview with Viveat Susan Pinto, he explains what more YouTube is doing to improve advertising revenue in India. Edited excerpts:
How can advertisers leverage YouTube, apart from uploading video-based ads?
Advertisers can upload banner as well as text ads and also target specific audiences. Our advertising platform can help find specific consumers and deliver an ad to them. At the same time, we have a concept called TrueView that allows the user to be in control of what they want to view. This makes for a better user environment. We ask the advertiser to pay only if the viewer has seen the ad. So, it is a win-win situation, where we give control to the viewer to see the ad and ask the advertiser to pay only if the ad has been viewed by the user.
What other avenues of monetisation are available on YouTube?
We are focused on building an ad-supported business. There is a lot of revenue growth possible in that area. The reason I say this is because a lot of advertisers are convinced YouTube is a great place to build brands. Almost 43 per cent of all video on the internet is watched on YouTube. The next closest site is much smaller. We are the largest and leading video player and in a position to leverage.
While YouTube started with short-form video, is long-format video also growing?
That is true. The genesis of YouTube started from short-form video. But as the connectivity gets better and more content comes to the platform, there is an explosion in longer-form content. This also opens myriad possibilities and allows us to increase the amount of time people spend on YouTube. Also, we don’t control the duration of the content. It is up to the content creator to do that.
How important is live streaming, especially in a market like India?
It is at the heart of the user experience on YouTube. The fact that we can live-stream to so many people over the internet is an engineering feat. However, globally, it is a small percentage of our revenue, mainly because viewing on YouTube is not appointment-based. In India, that is not the case. Live streaming is a bigger percentage of our revenues here mainly because of the IPL (Indian Premier League). Our live streaming overall is focused on a few sporting leagues, tournaments and musical events. We find it works best when there is interest in a particular event or tournament. It makes sense to capitalise on that.
People in India are viewing internet through mobile phones. How are you bracing for this challenge?
We are constantly improving the speed at which a user can watch or stream a video. We call it latency. We have made huge strides in this area in the last few years and will continue with it. We realise, more than ever, the faster we can deliver content, the better it is. Speed is one of the core tenets of our company. There are a number of engineers working on that. The mobile phone will be one of the primary ways in which people will consume video on YouTube. We will work relentlessly to make the video-viewing experience on smart phones a delightful one.
