“YouTube can be a partner to your business and boost your business.” This is how Andreas Briese, a top executive at the Google-owned video platform in his role as country director for Germany and regional director for Central and Northern Europe (CCE), pitched YouTube as a partner for the TV industry, rather than a rival, during the opening keynote of NATPE Budapest 2025 on Tuesday.
“YouTube can be a partner to engage with new audiences, to unlock new revenue streams and also innovate,” he argued.
He pointed to a previously disclosed figure to highlight the reach and power of YouTube. The platform, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, paid $70 billion-plus to creators, artists and media companies over the last three years, he mentioned, concluding: “No other platform is operating on that scale.”
Bries also emphasized that YouTube needs TV and other content partners, citing YouTube CEO Neal Mohan who previously explained the video platform’s exit from creating content itself by acknowledging:
“We weren’t good at picking content.”
As a consequence, “we are only successful if you are successful,” including through YouTube’s revenue-share model, Briese said, with content partners bringing the premium content and talent that audiences crave. In turn, YouTube allows for monetization of content and data sharing tools that provide opportunities to optimize content, among other things.
“Television became the leading device of YouTube in the U.S.,” Briese also highlighted in his NATPE Budapest keynote. “It’s the most watched streaming service on TV devices, ahead of Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc. We know in many other markets that is also the case. YouTube is currently serving 1 billion hours of TV watch time a day.”
Also key is that 50 percent of this TV watch time is “coming from content that is longer than 20 minutes, which means longform content is driving TV consumption of YouTube,” he said.
Outlining the YouTube advertising revenue model, Briese emphasized an aspect that isn’t always fully understood. “We share revenues with our partners — that’s the bread and butter business of YouTube,” he explained. “What is important to understand is revenues do not scale with views on our platform, they scale with watch time. The more content is watched, the more we are able to sell ad breaks before and in between your content. And this is why watch time is really, really important,” and that’s why producers and broadcasters look to allow users to engage more with long-form content on YouTube, “because that is driving watch time.”
He mentioned the example of Channel 4 in the U.K., which has shared data that shows that the broadcaster increased its longform content on YouTube by 81 percent, but boosted total time viewed on YouTube by 105 percent, full episode views by 169 percent and YouTube revenue by 78 percent. Briese didn’t detail what period that data was for.
In terms of full episodes of TV content coming to YouTube, “we have seen interesting approaches, which both pay tribute to the fact that it’s a distribution platform, but also a marketing platform,” the executive told NATPE Budapest. For example, Paramount+, one week after the launch of the first episode of Lioness launched the same episode in its full length on YouTube for a period of time “to drive, of course, watch time, but also as a promotional tool to drive awareness of their own service,” Briese explained.
Similarly, Disney+ brought the full first season of Andor to YouTube before the launch of season 2 “as a loyalty instrument to create awareness and also to drive traffic back to Disney+,” he said. “What we do see is, specifically when we talk about producers and broadcasters, that often longform content represents a minority of their uploads, but the majority of their revenues and their watch time.”
The YouTube exec also pointed to YouTube as a place for innovation for content partners or, as he called it, a “petri dish to test new formats.” In the gaming space, that has been the case. And more recently, “you see, for example, for live streaming a trend toward group watching of live videos,” Briese said.
NATPE Budapest, which has positioned itself as a platform for deal-making, exchange and content discovery, as well as “a launchpad for the next wave of formats, scripted hits, and cross-border partnerships,” said Monday that its latest edition was welcoming more than 750 delegates from 65-plus countries, including more than 400 buyers, up from last year.