New features mean you can now control the YouTube app on TV whilst browsing on your phone. Here’s how to sync the two apps.
If you’ve ever wondered how to sync your phone to YouTube on TV from iPhone and Android phones, YouTube have you covered. A new feature turns your phone into an extension of the main TV screen.
The changes turn a phone into a remote control for YouTube on your TV, so you can pause video, comment and subscribe with the two screens synched up.
How to connect phone to YouTube on TV
First, sign in to the same YouTube account on your device and TV
Open the YouTube app on both the phone and on the TV
Hit Connect when prompted
YouTube said: “You can directly interact with the video you are watching from the convenience of your phone. That means it’s easier than ever to read video descriptions, leave comments, share the video with a friend, or support your favourite creators by sending a Super Chat or becoming a member, all while you watch on the big screen.”
Why the change? Research by YouTube found that the vast majority of people use a second screen whilst watching YouTube on their TV – over 80%, and many are browsing the YouTube mobile app at the same time, with the same video open on their phone.
The new feature is also a good way to keep users glued to YouTube rather than browsing different apps at the same time.
Alphabet’s Q1 2022 financial results put YouTube’s ad-revenue at more than double Spotify’s ad and subscriber revenue for the quarter.
Alphabet’s (YouTube’s parent company) Q1 2022 results show YouTube’s advertising revenues to be at $6.87 billion, up 14% year-over-year. After even larger growth in 2021, with $6.005 billion representing a 49% growth over the same quarter in 2020, thanks in part to the pandemic, analytics forecasts for this quarter were roughly $7.4 billion, with a growth of 25%.
Despite missed expectations, YouTube’s ad-revenue alone in Q1 2022 were more than double Spotify’s entire revenue generated in the quarter, with results of €2.661 billion ($2.98bn), across Premium subscriptions and ad-supported Free revenues. Spotify’s results were up 19% year-over-year.
Alphabet didn’t announce YouTube revenue from subscribers in Q1 2022, however CFO Ruth Porat stated “substantial growth in YouTube non-advertising revenues driven by subscriber growth in YouTube Music and Premium and YouTube TV”. YouTube Shorts stats were also updated, with YouTube claiming the short-form video platform receives over 30 billion daily views, which is four times as many as a year ago.
YouTube highlight just how popular the video platform, their creators and YouTube Shorts are across devices, such as TVs.
Upfronts is the annual gathering of digital and linear television advertisers. Year by year, the event seems to be less and less about broadcast TV and increasingly about streaming. YouTube see themselves as leading this change with seemingly endless content, creators and platforms. Director of Global Advertiser Marketing at YouTube, Cenk Bulbul shared some of the big numbers hoping to entice advertisers on to the platform.
“YouTube is the #1 streaming platform across all devices, reaching over 230 million people in the US in one month alone.”
“Last year, 135 million people watched YouTube on their Connected TVs (CTV), representing every age bracket from 2+, including Gen Z to 55+.”
“YouTube has over 50% of ad-supported streaming watch time on TV screens.”
“Shorts are now averaging over 30 billion daily views, a 4X increase from a year ago.”
“If MrBeast’s YouTube channel was its own streaming service, it would have more subscribers than the next three most popular ad-supported streaming services.”
“We paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies in the three years prior to November 2020.”
YouTube just brought Key Moments over to the YouTube Studio mobile app, allowing creators to see valuable video insights on-the-go.
Launched in 2020, “Key moments for audience retention” is one of the many useful tools available in YouTube Analytics. It shows creators the spikes and dips of moments in the video, which is essential to find areas working well and opportunities for improvements. You can view this data on a video-by-video basis or at the channel level, so you can see your top moments, across videos, published in the last year. Click here for info on understanding your key moments.
Now, YouTube are bringing key moments and other new features to the YouTube Studio mobile app. YouTube are also bringing video player capabilities to the feature on mobile and desktop, meaning you can easily see the key moment and corresponding moment in video.
Select the Overview or Engagement tab and look for the Audience retention report. You can click SEE MORE to see how your video compares to all YouTube videos of similar length.
Image Credit: YouTube
How to view Key Moments on mobile
Open the YouTube Studio app and tap Content.
Choose a video.
Tap GO TO VIDEO ANALYTICS.
Scroll down to Audience retention and tap the graph for full details.
TikTok Pulse may soon help top creators earn a salary on the short-form video platform, by sharing ad revenue.
While platforms like YouTube, with their Partner Programme, offer creators a percentage of the revenue earned from ads, short-form platforms like TikTok have struggled to compete in offering its creators any meaningful amount of revenue. This is due to the way ads work on TikTok. As the videos are much shorter, advert can’t run on or between every video without losing every user. For this reason, on top of the way TikTok currently splits revenue among creators, many high profile creators have reported receiving significantly lower revenue per view than platforms like YouTube. This leads prominent TikTok creators to work with third-party brands for sponsorship deals or to reply on other platforms for revenue.
By running ads alongside videos, TikTok Pulse plans to share a cut of the revenue with eligible creators. Ads will run on “the top 4% of all videos on TikTok”. Creators and publishers with at least 100,000 followers will be paid 50% of the ad revenue, which is close to the reported amount paid by YouTube. The program is due to launch in the US in June, with additional markets coming later this fall.
While I’m not expecting this deal to offer creators as much per view as the YouTube Partner Programme, this should help end some of the mystery around how and the inconsistency around how much creators are paid via the TikTok Creator Fund. As a consumer, if you find yourself regularly watching some of the most popular content on the platform, you may see an increase in the number of ads.
For most, Reels are still capped at 60 seconds, but some users are noticing the option to create a minute and a half of content, with the same creation tools as always. Instagram says there’s no official plan in place to make 90 seconds the norm for Reels – but the testing suggests it will eventually roll out to all app users.
For artists with music on Instagram, a longer Reel means more of a song can be used for a backing track, showcasing more of the release. That makes choosing which snippet of song to highlight in a Reel a little easier!
The max time for Instagram Reels has been creeping up since their initial introduction as 15-second short clips. Reels first appeared as a direct competitor to TikTok when Instagram sought to catch up with the new platform’s popularity. When TikTok first allowed its users to create longer videos, Instagram and Facebook weren’t far behind in lengthening their TikTok copies, too.
Meta, parent company of Instagram, has been determinedly moving away from the traditional static images that the app was built on to focus on video content. It’s a shift that looks set to continue.
Whenever a social media platform introduces a new feature to the app, it’s a smart move for creators to immediately make content using the new tool. The platform wants to push users towards the new feature, and the algorithm reacts positively to new posts, boosting content up the feed. So if you see 90 second Reels on your Instagram, be sure to hop on that trend.
Find out everything you need to know about Instagram Reels here:
As Shorts continues to grow, Google’s chief business officer told investors they have started testing advertisements. “While it’s still early days, we’re encouraged by initial advertiser feedback and results.” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. said during the call: “As we’ve always done with products, we focus on building a great user experience first, and we’ll work to build monetization over time.”
Outside of Shorts, YouTube’s overall ad-revenue saw growth of 14% to $6.87 billion. Despite the growth, this fell short of analyst expections by more than $600 million. Wall Street projected YouTube ad-revenue to hit $7.48 billion, but the results of a cooling off from the pace seen during the pandemic could have slowed growth.
YouTube subscription services on the other hand “continued to deliver substantial revenue growth” with services like YouTube TV, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.
As more than 700 million hours of YouTube are streamed on connected televisions per day, YouTube look to improve interactivity features, such as allowing users to comment and share content.
YouTube have added nearly 4,000 episodes of top TV shows, plus over 1,500 movies that can be streamed for free with ads across devices.
As the top ad-supported streaming platform, YouTube position themselves at the forefront of the consumer shift to connected TV (CTV) viewership. According to Nielsen, YouTube was seen on connected TVs by over 135 million people in the US in December 2021. Beyond the usual content and creators viewers love, US viewers will now find full seasons of classic TV favourites like Hell’s Kitchen, Andromeda, Heartland and more.
Movies come from top studios like Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, FilmRise, and more. Recent additions include Gone in Sixty Seconds, Runaway Bride and Legally Blonde, all available to stream now for free.
Alongside content, YouTube have launched brand new streamlined navigation and immersive banner art to help you easily find your favourite TV shows. Whether you rent, purchase of watch for free with ads, many of these titles are available in high definition 1080p with 5.1 surround sound audio on supported devices.
All films and TV shows are available across web browsers, mobile devices and most connected TVs via the YouTube on TV app. Click here to browse free-to-watch TV shows. Click here to browse free-to-watch movies. Be sure to check back regularly, as YouTube says to expect up to 100 new titles each weeks.
YouTube announce Go Live Together, Live Rings, Cross Channel Live Redirects, Fullscreen Mode and Live Q&A features coming soon.
YouTube’s Creator Insider channel announce new features coming to Live in the coming days and months. Find the video below. Viewers are prompted to leave feedback in the comments.
Go Live Together
First and most excitingly, Go Live Together is a collaborative feature that lets hosts invite guests onto their stream with a link. The host can screen guests before going live. Once live, the guests channel and user information remains hidden to streamers. After the stream, only the host can see streaming analytics in YouTube Analytics. Preroll and midroll ads can appear in collaborative streams and will be attributed to the host.
Collaborative live streams are of course a much loved feature on other social platforms like Instagram, which lets up to four users stream together. This is currently a small pilot, but the tests will expand to more channels based on feedback.
Live Rings
As we saw last month, YouTube have started rolling out red rings around channels currently live streaming. Much like on Instagram, this feature helps highlight active streams and provides a single tap for viewers to jump right in. Live Rings are currently testing on some mobile devices, with plans to expand across YouTube later this year.
Currently, channels with over 1,000 subscribers can use live redirects to direct viewers from their live stream or premier to another live stream or premier on their own channel.
The new update allows channels with over 1,000 subscribers and no active community guideline strikes to direct viewers to a live stream or premier hosted on another channel. The channel being redirected to can approve channels allowed to redirect to them, or allow all channels they are subscribed to, to redirect to them.
This update is a great addition, especially for collaborators or brands with multiple channels.
Fullscreen Mode
YouTube are introducing a new split screen approach to live streams. Where chat used to overlay the live stream, YouTube on mobile now has two different viewing experiences. Lean in shows the live stream and live chat in split screen. Lean back collapses the chat to show the live stream in fullscreen, while showing teasers of key moments such as polls. Tap the viewer count to switch back to lean in mode. The update to fullscreen mode should be fully released by the end of the week.
Creators can now prompt questions from viewers. Answered questions by the creator are temporarily pinned to the top of the live chat, encouraging viewers to submit questions and enables deeper connections within their community. Live Q&A is rolling out in the coming months.
Rachel Alves, who works on the recommendation system at YouTube, answers creator’s questions about the video platform’s algorithm.
The three-minute video from Creator Insider answers the following questions: How do I optimize my uploads for the algorithm? Should I create videos on trending topics? Does experimenting with topics hurt your channel performance? Does deleting comments hurt your channel performance? This is all crucial information for success on YouTube.
