The beginning of a new year means new beginnings for everything and everyone! YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, emphasized this point when he posted his letter to the Inside YouTube blog on February 6, 2024. 

The letter entitled “Letter from the YouTube CEO: 4 Big bets for 2024,” promises readers an inside scoop on what YouTube’s new year’s resolutions are. Hopefully with them being published online for the masses, they’ll come to fruition. 

Source: Inside YouTube blog

Celebrating Accomplishments 

Before getting into their new goals, YouTube began their letter with wanting to celebrate what they were able to accomplish in 2023. According to the letter/blog post, “Today [February 6, 2024] more than 3 million channels are in the YouTube Partner Program(YPP).” 

The YouTube Partner Program allows creators to monetize their content, making creating content a viable source of income. The letter/blog post goes on to boast that, “[The] YPP has paid out more than any other creator monetization platform, and we paid over $70 billion to creators, artists, and media companies over the last three years.” 

Throughout the letter/blog post, other YouTube milestones were addressed such as, “Shorts is averaging over 70 billion daily views, and the number of channels uploading Shorts has grown 50% year over year.”

Source: Inside YouTube blog

YouTube’s 2024 Top Priorities

With 2023 having come to an end, Neal Mohan says in his letter, “We are at a key moment in history and I’m excited about what lies ahead.” 

1. YouTube wants AI to empower human creativity, not replace it. 

YouTube’s mission has always been about enabling all people to create no matter what kind of experience or lack thereof you may have. With that in mind, YouTube believes that everyone should have access to AI tools that will push boundaries of creation and help bring people’s visions to life. 

Here are some AI features that YouTube currently has or is working on to empower creators to be the best that they can be: 

Dream Screen: Creates AI-generated backgrounds using inputted text prompts for YouTube Shorts. 

Music AI Incubator: A group of talented music industry professionals that help YouTube gather insights and research on voice/music generative AI experiments.

Dream Track: An experiment born from the Music AI incubator!

Have you heard what’s going on between UMG and TikTok? Read all about it here!

2. YouTube is investing more in its Creators. 

Neal Mohan says, “Creators are truly entrepreneurs, and we’re helping them diversify the ways they make money on YouTube.” 

With YouTube’s Shopping affiliate program, YouTube is investing in ways creators earn money while also helping viewers shop for products. Additionally, viewers now have the opportunity to directly fund their favorite creators with options like channel memberships and Super Chats. 

Having trouble with compensation negotiations? Here are 6 options for you to choose from!

According to Mohan, “The number of creators using memberships increased more than 50% last year, and creators are seeing the impact of fan funding.” YouTube is also working behind the scenes with creators through a program called the Creator Collective, where YouTube has gathered feedback from creators to better the platform for them.

Part of this goal for YouTube is to give credit where credit is due for creators. His letter states that most countries do not account for creators in labor data. This despite the fact that most creators have an international audience. 

3. YouTube Wants to Conquer the Small Screen.

According to Mohan, “Viewers globally now watch more than 1 billion hours on average of YouTube content on their TVs every day.” Additionally, the number of top creators that received the majority of their watch time on TVs increased more than 400%. Not to mention, according to Nielson’s report on streaming, in the United States, YouTube was the leader in streaming watch time for the past year.

That being said, YouTube is extremely excited to see creators working on optimizing their content to be viewed on TVs. Especially because YouTube TV now has more than 8 million subscribers. 

4. YouTube is Determined to Protect the Creator Economy. 

YouTube will never diminish the importance of the other three priorities listed from this letter. However, YouTube claims that their #1 priority is ensuring that the YouTube community is protected. Mohan says, “Protecting the creator economy is foundational to everything we do, and it’s good for business.” 

In protecting the creator economy, YouTube finds it important to ensure that it creates a healthy environment for kids and teens. With their youth based products and content reaching more than 100 million active viewers each month, YouTube says that they are working in coordination with parents and mental health experts to ensure their safety. 

Additionally, YouTube finds it imperative that to protect the creator economy, they must work against election misinformation. Their “playbook” against election misinformation for this year’s presidential election was published in December of 2023 and goes over their ideas on how to support facts while deflecting misinformation: 

• Elevating high-quality election content 
• Addressing AI-generated election misinformation 
• Combating influencer operations from foreign adversaries 
• Supporting elections around the world

Additionally, in the coming months, YouTube will be launching labels that will inform viewers when the realistic content that they are viewing may be synthetic. 

Closing Thoughts

YouTube’s top priorities for this year do not come as a surprise, in fact they are incredibly refreshing. These priorities are things that all social media platforms should take stock of and consider priorities for themselves. Most of these goals are prioritizing the consumer and ultimately, that will help your brand in the long run. 

Helping consumers have a better experience using your platform can only have a better impact on your brand reputation. YouTube’s approach to what they are prioritizing in 2024 is organized, concise, and quite frankly, admirable. We hope we’re not the only ones that are excited to watch these all play out!