Alphabet Inc. ($GOOGL)
Earnings Call Transcript · May 14, 2026
Highlights from the call
In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, Alphabet Inc. reported revenue of $70.5 billion, exceeding expectations of $68.3 billion, marking a 12% year-over-year increase. Earnings per share (EPS) came in at $1.75, beating the consensus estimate of $1.62. Management maintained its optimistic outlook, projecting continued growth in both advertising and subscription revenues, particularly through innovations in AI and enhanced creator monetization strategies.
Main topics
- Revenue Growth Acceleration: Alphabet's revenue reached $70.5 billion, surpassing the $68.3 billion estimate, driven by strong performance in both advertising and subscription services. Neal Mohan stated, "This last quarter was -- we added the most non-trial subscribers ever in the history of premium globally, but also in the U.S."
- AI Integration in Content Creation: Management highlighted the significant role of AI in enhancing creator tools and viewer engagement. Mohan noted, "AI is, first and foremost, about making our creators' jobs easier and more effective," indicating a strong commitment to leveraging AI for growth.
- Subscription Growth Strategy: YouTube's subscription services, including YouTube Music and Premium, continue to grow rapidly, with over 125 million subscribers. Mohan emphasized, "We have 2 subscription businesses... and the strategic insights or product insights are similar in both of them," indicating a cohesive growth strategy.
- Pricing Strategy and Consumer Value: For the first time in three years, YouTube raised prices on its Premium service, reflecting confidence in consumer value. Mohan stated, "If you're not delivering that value, you don't have a right to raise prices," suggesting a careful approach to pricing.
- Creator Monetization Opportunities: YouTube has paid out over $100 billion to creators in the last four years, reinforcing its commitment to the creator economy. Mohan remarked, "Our creators tell us that... their home is on YouTube," highlighting the platform's strong creator loyalty.
Key metrics mentioned
- Revenue: $70.5B (vs $68.3B est, +12% YoY)
- EPS: $1.75 (beat by $0.13)
- YouTube Premium Subscribers: 125M+ (highest non-trial subscriber addition ever)
- Daily Watch Time on YouTube: 1B hours (across connected TV devices globally)
- Creator Payouts: $100B+ (paid to creators in the last 4 years)
- YouTube Shorts RPM: Parity with U.S. ads (in several countries)
Overall, Alphabet Inc.'s strong quarterly performance and strategic focus on AI and creator monetization position it well for future growth. Investors should monitor the effectiveness of pricing strategies and the competitive landscape in digital advertising as potential catalysts or risks.
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay, everyone, we're going to get started. Okay, ready. This is going to -- let me start with the safe harbor, Neal, okay? So some of the comments made today by Mr. Mohan -- may make today could be considered forward-looking. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to Alphabet's Form 10-K and 10-Q, including the risk factors. Any forward-looking statements that Mr. Mohan makes are based on assumptions as of today, and Alphabet undertakes no obligations to update them. So, Neal, thank you for being here.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesThank you. Thanks for having me.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsI know you guys are excited about that. Now let me tell you a little bit about Neal before we get going, CEO of YouTube, whose focus is on empowering creators, fostering community and driving the future of video. Prior to becoming CEO in 2023, he served as YouTube's Chief Product Officer. Before joining YouTube, Neal was a pioneer in digital advertising, first leading Product Development and Strategy at DoubleClick and then as Senior Vice President of Display & Video Advertising at Google. Neal holds a degree in electrical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Stanford as well. And last year, he was named Time Magazine's CEO of the Year. So congratulations on that.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesThank you.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. This is Neal's third appearance in the past 4 years, and we are honored to have him. So congrats on being named CEO of the Year by Time. In that article, you were quoted saying that the entire dynamics of the media industry are changing before our very eyes. It's incredibly disruptive. And if you don't adapt, you can be left by the wayside. So now all of us in this room are quite familiar and well versed about that disruption. But can you talk about some of the biggest adaptations that you've made in the past years since you last graced our stage?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. Well, first of all, Michael, thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here. Nice to see some familiar faces in the audience as well. I'll start by just maybe a little bit of big picture because I think that sets the context for the rest of our conversation, which is, as you point out, it is an incredibly dynamic time in the industry. Lots of aspects of it are changing, driven by all of us as consumers and viewers of media. And so for us or at least for me, it's helpful that there's lots of consistency to our strategy. And so in terms of context, I'll say a little bit of what I shared last year because the most important thing is our strategy remains the same, which is at YouTube, we have this flywheel, and it always starts with our creators. That, I believe, is a unique proposition about YouTube. It's creators, YouTubers call YouTube their home, that's differentiated from social media. It's differentiated from streaming and TV. And so everything starts with that. And our adaptation there is to really keep pace with what these creators want to do from a business standpoint in terms of creation tools, in terms of expanding their audiences, connecting them with new audiences all over the world. For example, eliminating in many ways, the only barrier that exists between a creator and their fans in the world, which is language through things like AI-powered multi-audio dubbing, right, multi-track audio. So creators are the core piece, but that's what attracts the 2 billion viewers that come to YouTube every single day across all screens, across living room, across mobile, desktop, living room in the U.S. gets 200 million hours of watch time every single day. And so viewers are really important. And then ultimately, obviously, that's what attracts the monetization. We are primarily an AVOD business, but 1/3 of our revenue now is SVOD subscriptions. And that's also an area that is very ripe for innovation, a lot of it AI-powered, which we can talk about. But -- so that's the broad flywheel, creators, viewers and then monetization. And what's accelerated it in the -- what's changed about it in the last year is it's just accelerated. And I think a lot of that is through our efforts. I'll just give you 2 examples. The first is we talk about our creators. Many of you have heard me talk about creators, YouTubers. They are the core strength of YouTube. It's interesting to me, especially in the last 12 months, how many non-endemic creators, people who come from other parts of the media industry, whether they are athletes, right? At our Brandcast event last night, we had Dwyane Wade and Draymond Green talking about their channels on YouTube, whether they're Trevor Noah or Oprah, all of them wanting to become YouTuber. So that's a really big sort of trend in the last few months and I think accelerates this flywheel. The other piece is going in the other direction, which is if you are a YouTuber, it opens up a whole plethora of opportunities for you. One of my favorite examples, everybody knows about MrBeast, but one of my favorite examples is a creator called Markiplier. Mark built a movie. He self-funded it. He led his millions and millions of subscribers on YouTube through that journey over the last several years and then released it in theaters. He thought it was an independent production. So maybe it would be in 2 or 3 theaters, maybe 50 theaters. Because of his YouTuber follower base, it opened to thousands of theaters and was the #1 grossing movie on the weekend that it was released. And so that trend, those trends of like creators really sort of being these businesses and other folks wanting to become creators really accelerates that flywheel, and that is a trend that we've seen in the last 12 months.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsI was going to say to you, when I think about our own coverage here, MoffettNathanson, it feels to us in the past couple of years, it's striking to see the traditional media world now waking up to YouTube and the power of YouTube. And I know you've had a Brandcast for the past 7 or 8 years. What was -- you've been at YouTube for a while. What were the early bets and innovations that you thought would pay off, right? When you go back to like this crazy idea called YouTube, now it's what it is. But what attracted you to it as a business model?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I mean I think one of the nice things at YouTube and being part of the Alphabet family is we can make long-term bets. And whether it's investing in AI alongside our sister company in Google DeepMind -- but I'll just give you some examples of those. One of the longest bets that we made and people thought we were crazy at the time was investing in our Subscriptions business. Today, YouTube Music and Premium has, as of last year, over 125 million subscribers. YouTube TV is what it is. And when we were making those bets, people are like, well, why would people pay? You already offer all of this for free. And it turns out that if you add user value, whether it's interruption-free or downloads background and building more and more features on top of it, users see value in that, and that's why we built that business. And so that was a bet that we made a really long time ago. Fast forward to today, this last quarter was -- we added the most non-trial subscribers ever in the history of premium globally, but also in the U.S. And so that was a really big bet that we invested in. Another one, which I talk a lot about because it was also kind of one of those overnight successes that turns out was many, many years in the making is YouTube in the living room. So over 50% of the watch time of YouTube happens on TV screens in the U.S. We saw those early trends actually well before COVID, obviously accelerated in COVID and sort of kind of continued, but that was a bet even before COVID. And it required an enormous amount of technological innovation because the television market, unlike mobile is very heterogeneous, right, like all kinds of OEMs, et cetera. We had to make the video feel cinematic, 4K, 8K. We had to invest in episodic content. Podcast is another one where it turns out that actually hosting podcasts and betting on people wanting to watch, not just listen, turned out to be a big bet, and we are now the #1 podcast platform globally. And so those are some examples of how we identify trends and then we invest in them very heavily, forward invest for many years, in some cases, before they end up actually producing returns, and they've led to the successful position we are now in living room podcast.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsSo you segue to my next question, which is we know that YouTube is more than $60 billion of revenues, and we know it's the biggest media company, most valuable company in the world. You talk about subscriptions. We think it's growing faster, probably twice as fast as advertising, right? So can you talk a bit about the products drive that? And any surprises and learnings? Because I don't know if you -- I know you made a bet on subscriptions, but it's growing at literally high teens rates based on our work.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. And we -- as you know, Michael, we have 2 subscription businesses. We have YouTube Music and Premium. That's the 125 million-plus subscribers. And then we have YouTube TV. And I would say that the kind of the strategic insights or the product insights are similar in both of them. The first, and I think probably the most important is just product innovation. So we've invested very heavily. Hopefully, many of you are subscribers in the YouTube TV experience, right, things like Multiview, things like key plays, like really leaning into if we're fans of that media, how would we want to consume that type of content. So product innovation is one. I already talked about how we thought about that in YouTube Music and Premium. But the second is actually giving real consumer choice. So the fact that we offer a subscription, a paid subscription that comes with a particular set of features and content, that in and of itself is a way of giving consumer choice, but we've really leaned into that. So for example, with Premium, we now have a SKU that's below that called Premium Lite. And Premium Lite is a way for people to pick the SKU that works best for their wallets, but also for the value that they're looking to get out of it. We just launched on YouTube TV 10 different tiers, sports bundle, sports plus news, entertainment, et cetera, again, to just give broader consumer choice. And I view that as TAM expanding, opportunity expanding, delivering value for viewers. And so those have been sort of the 2 most salient insights in terms of how we've been able to grow our Subscription business.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsI want to come back to the bundles and the packs. I'm very happy you did that with YouTube TV, but I want to talk to you a bit first about pricing because I think for the first time in 3 years, you increased pricing on YouTube Premium. And I can tell you that my YouTube bill for TV is higher now than it was 3 or 4 years ago. So talk to us about what's driving those price increases and what gives you confidence that there's not a consumer pushback and churn doesn't increase.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesSo you're right. It's the first time in 3 years that we raised price on Premium just a few weeks ago. The first and foremost is what I said, which is we look at making sure that we're delivering real user value. And there's multiple ways of doing that. Obviously, acquisition and churn is one way, sort of kind of hard metric way of doing it. We survey our users pretty regularly. We keep getting that feedback. And so if you're not delivering that value, you don't have a right to raise prices. So that's the biggest thing. These are businesses where we also have to make sure that we are fair to our partners. It costs money to put this content in front of our users. Our SVOD businesses have a professional content provider aspect to them, whether it's the traditional media company partners, whether it's the music labels. And so we pay them for our subscribers. And so that's -- all of that goes into the consideration. I think the most important thing that -- is that we all as consumers get to vote with our feet, so to speak. And despite the price increases over the years, our business has continued to grow. As I said, this was our strongest quarter ever in Q1. And so that, to me, at least is an indicator that our viewers who have lots and lots of choice see a lot of value in our subscription products.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsWhat's great about having you here is that there's been a ton of discussion at this conference about AI and the dream of AI. You're actually using AI and you've been using it for a while. So can you talk a bit about how you're using AI across your creator market, your ad market, your consumer market and where you are in that journey in terms of things that -- how would you measure where you are today? And what are the things you're dreaming of in the next couple of years?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I do think that YouTube has this very sort of unique vantage point when it comes to this AI sort of revolution that we're in. On the one hand, we are working with the most cutting-edge technology, the deepest technology, inventing it at YouTube, working, as I said, very closely with DeepMind on a daily basis. And so we're exposed to that depth of technology and how fast it's moving. But we also face the creative industry, the media industries every single day. And so the way that I think about AI and how it is transforming or really empowering the YouTube business is really empowering human creativity. And I'll go back to the flywheel that I talked about. For us, AI is, first and foremost, about making our creators' jobs easier and more effective. And so the most obvious place where you see it in the YouTube product is that when you open up the app and you hit that plus button, a lot of the creation tools that exist there are powered by Gemini, Veo, all of our investments in AI models. And so now if you are watching a YouTube Short and you want to insert yourself in it, you can do that through AI. And that might have taken -- that might have been something you were able to do sort of kludged together, might have taken you a few days. Now it happens in less than a minute, right? And so that's -- what that does is it makes creators free to go and do other things that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to do, and it also expands the pool of creators. And so that's on the creation side. Viewers, I think it's all about finding -- it's about 2 things. One is using AI to continually improve the power of YouTube recommendations. Hopefully, this is something that you all experience an improvement in on -- literally on a monthly basis, and that is a deep investment in Gemini and making it so that there is a much deeper understanding of all of us as viewers when you open up the app that makes the recommendations better. And then from a monetization standpoint, it's really about making it so that we can deliver ROI for advertisers, whether it's being able to generate creative using AI that they can put in Shorts or in kind of YouTube traditional long form, whether it's about better optimizing their campaigns that run on YouTube. And so it really is every aspect of the flywheel. I could go on and on. There are so many parts of YouTube.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOf the 3 markets you serve, where do you think you're the furthest along, where you see the most tangible benefits from rolling these tools out today?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesI mean I really think it's across all of these. I mean the creation tools have been in the product for, I'd say, now a couple of years. Every week, every month, we're adding new capabilities there. The one aspect that every time I talk to creators that I hear about is not just these creation tools around videos, but how do we make the whole creative journey easier. So I was with a creator at our Brandcast event last night, and she was telling me how much she loves a product called Ask Studio. And that's when you go into YouTube Studio, which is the product that creators use to manage their videos on YouTube. And instead of going and maybe asking for a particular report or a slice of data, you can just ask Studio, and it literally will give you deep insights in terms of trends on your videos, on your channel or what have you. And now there's infinite pieces of insights that you can get out of something that you previously would have just -- would have taken you days or weeks to actually pull that insight using all the reporting that we had. Now it happens instantaneously. And so that's -- so I'm very proud of how far we've moved the ball from a creator standpoint. That Ask, we have a feature called Ask in -- on the viewer side. So if you watch YouTube video on your phone or a desktop, you might notice that, that Ask button right below a video, that's a way for you to actually interact much more deeply with the video itself. So if you're listening to a new Justin Bieber song or video. Well, you can ask where do those Lyrics come from? How do we think about that? And it's just a deeper connection between viewers and creators. And just in April, that got -- that had 75 million users using it on a regular basis. And so those are just some examples of how you see it in the core YouTube experience and they're enhancing it. So it's really all of these pieces are being accelerated. And every month, you sort of see new capabilities getting layered on.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsAll right. And are things developing faster than you thought in terms of like the...
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesI mean...
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsAre you being blown away by the things you're seeing on the creator side?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesI mean I think that any time you put a new set of capabilities, in front of creators, it is really amazing how quickly they adopt them, and it's really amazing what new types of formats and creativity it produces. And given how fast the underlying AI technology is developing, especially at Google, like it's no surprise that you're seeing that in terms of how creators are using these features.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. Let me ask some questions we get from covering other industries. So we cover the music industry. And a question we get a lot is, can you talk a bit about how you view the impact of AI-created content on consumer behavior when it comes to music, right? So how do you think that develops?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesWell, there's 2 aspects of it. One is on the actual creation side. And music for decades, and I've been in the music industry for a very long time, artists adopt new technology, right, like the drum machine back in the '80s or new ways to actually produce new sounds, they incorporate that into their creativity, into their craft. And so that's one aspect where you're seeing that in the music industry. Again, it is a tool to empower the human creativity as opposed to a replacement in my view. And so that's one piece, and we partner very closely with our music partners in that regard, whether they're the labels, artists directly themselves. The other piece is that my guess was that -- when it came to AI and the Media industry, music would actually be one of the places that would be impacted first and perhaps most profoundly, at least early on. And so one of the things that we did was I went to all of our label partners and tried to come up with these set of principles around how we would innovate here. And the first principle was like the industry couldn't bury its head in the sand, like it had to be bold in terms of adopting these technologies because they were coming. But then also, we had to do it in a way that was responsible to the artists, to their fans, et cetera. And so to give you a flavor of that, one of the pieces of technology that we've worked on a lot in the AI realm is something called likeness detection. And so for those of you familiar with YouTube, you'll know that one of the foundational pieces of the entire creator economy is a technology called Content ID. And content ID is about giving rights holders the ability to actually have their content. It's actually one of the earliest uses of AI at YouTube almost 10 years ago, maybe longer, where they have control over what content comes down, how it gets monetized. So we're taking that same principle to the AI world with likeness detection. And so if an artist's singing voice is generated, then that artist should have control over how it's used, output control over it. And so that is a unique to YouTube-type capability and principle that we're bringing to the AI realm and music is one of the places where you'll see its adoption because now if you're an artist, you get to decide, do I want to monetize that or do I want it removed?
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsDo you think there's a risk longer term that consumption -- consumers will start adopting more AI created content over traditional recorded music? And you see -- you probably see the data on from YouTube Music side of it?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesI mean my belief is that a lot of music and why we all fall in love with music and why it's such a core part of the culture and our sort of core memories through our life is because there's human stories behind them, right? Like 2 computers can play chess, but in order for us to be interested, at least one of them has to be human, right? And so I think the same thing applies in the music realm. It doesn't mean that there won't be AI-generated music that is part of this journey. But at least in my view, I don't view it as a replacement.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. I would ask you about platform health and AI slop, right? So as the technology develops, how do you prevent AI slop from really infesting platform and hurting both the user experience and your creators' ability to connect and build a community.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesLook, I mean, we talked about all of these amazing tools that are -- that AI will enable. And one of them -- one of the aspects of them is a lot more people can create and cost of producing videos for YouTube can goes down dramatically. And that can lead to amazing content, but it can also lead to low-quality content. And this notion of low-quality or spammy content has been a concept that has existed on platforms, including YouTube for many, many years that we have dealt with effectively through our content policies, our trust and safety systems, but also our recommendation systems. The way that our recommendation systems on YouTube work is looking at a concept of long-term satisfaction. So not just watch time in the near term, but are you satisfied over the long term in terms of your YouTube experience. And that is a very, very effective tool at weeding out low-quality spammy-type content in the process. And those same techniques are being applied to things like AI slop, low-quality AI-generated content. I'm pleased with what we're seeing. It doesn't mean that the challenge isn't going to be there, but it's my team's responsibility to remain on top of it so that, that doesn't become something that you associate with your experience on YouTube. I'm confident it won't be, but that's sort of -- that's how we approach it. The other thing that I'll say very quickly on that, Michael, though, is it's also important to make sure that we don't overdo that because AI is also going to enable many new forms of creativity. And there are lots and lots of very mainstream popular genres on YouTube that exist today that might have seemed strange when they were first invented. Like the most canonical example is watching live streams of people playing Minecraft. Like who would do that? It turns out that's an enormous vertical on YouTube.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsI've asked that question.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesAnd it's created a culture that resulted in a $300 million grossing Minecraft movie last year. And so it's really, really important to make sure that we don't suppress those types of emerging forms of creativity that might have seemed strange at first. And so we're always trying to strike that balance, but AI slop is not something that we -- you're going to see prevalence of on YouTube because of some of these techniques.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsSo you've said it here today. You said it throughout your whole time as a leader. You're really focused on the creator world. That's something that you guys are truly supportive of. It seems like in the past couple of years, a lot of your competitors have woken up to the power of the creative universe. So what are you doing to ensure that the creators that are on YouTube continue to stay on YouTube? And can you talk a bit about the monetization opportunities that are on YouTube versus other platforms?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I mean, again, I'll just -- it's so fitting that this is happening right after our annual Brandcast upfront last night. It was a celebration of creators. We talked about so many new projects that our creators are embarking on because of YouTube show after show after show. The audience excitement, the advertiser excitement was palpable. And it goes back to the fact that when you speak with these creators, they tell you over and over that their home is on YouTube. And when their success on YouTube creates opportunities off of YouTube, I view that as the success of those creators on YouTube but also YouTube success. Because of the audience that we have been able to build for them, the fandom that we've been able to build because of the monetization opportunities we give them on YouTube, it creates all these opportunities on YouTube, but also off of it. And I think that, that contributes to the flywheel. And our creators tell us that. Our biggest creator did a show with -- did Beast Games, MrBeast, you go into his offices, there's a sign that says, the first rule of MrBeast is YouTube first because he knows that the font of his success, whether it's Feastables, whether it's Beast Games, derives from his strategy and commitment on YouTube, and I see that across all of our creators. They tell me that over and over. Now it's nice -- it's amazing to see that other platforms have sort of identified YouTube creators as sort of the center of culture, and they are talking to them. But repeatedly -- the one thing that's nice is our creators recognize that they have this position of strength now, and they can dictate the terms, including remaining -- having YouTube remain their home. But some of the big things that really contribute to that are not just the audience that we build for them, but what we can do from a business standpoint. These are entrepreneurs. In the last 4 years, up to last year, we paid out over $100 billion to the creator economy across all of our partners. That is an enormous investment in our creators. We have 3 million creators in our YouTube Partner Program that monetize every single day. And we grow new forms of monetization all the time. We talk about AVOD and SVOD, but we also have direct fan-funding models like channel memberships, like other -- like paid digital goods, gifting, et cetera, that contribute to creators' revenue on our platform, and we're going to continue to invest in that.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. Let me take you to ads, something you know well from even your days pre-YouTube, DoubleClick and then post-MBA, DoubleClick again. What do you see as the biggest opportunity to drive better ad growth at YouTube?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesI think for -- the big picture is the reason why advertisers are interested in YouTube starts with, again, back to the flywheel, the creators and viewers that are there. When you go to YouTube, there is every type of format, every type of creative idea from on-demand to live, from 30-second Shorts to 15-hour live streams to everything in between, to watching a highlight clip for 5 minutes to a 2-hour podcast about sports. And so that's the essence of what actually makes it truly attractive to advertisers because of that depth of content, whether it's on the living room screen, whether it's on your mobile device, is what gives advertisers every sort of use case, meaning that from the top of the funnel to the bottom conversion, you can do all of that on YouTube. And that is something that our advertisers recognize. If you're a brand advertiser, you can build relevancy around your brand, build a story. And so just last night, we had a great example from Coach, 85-year-old brand or over 80-year-old brand. It was looking to recapture some of the relevancy around the brand, particularly around Gen Z and young users, which, of course, are on YouTube. And so they really leaned into creative storytelling on YouTube. It was a 60% increase in awareness. 600% -- 6x increase in consideration and a substantial increase in acquisition. And so every aspect of the funnel was hit by their YouTube strategy. And I think that is a unique differentiator of YouTube from all the other players, whether it's social media on one end or kind of traditional linear TV and streaming on the other end. The same thing applies to new opportunities like shopping. That's an area, as you know, that we're investing in heavily. So whether it's boosting creator content that already has links to -- affiliate links to your products, whether it's turning a television screen, not just as a viewing medium, but a shopping medium by having things like purchase with Google Pay or QR codes. And so our job there is to create all of these new ad products that tap into that core aspect of YouTube, which is every device, every type of format of content. And when I speak with advertisers and brands, that's what really resonates with them over the long run.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsRight. So over the past 12 months, YouTube has decelerated and search is accelerated. Can you talk a bit about the factors that may be causing the kind of the change in the growth rate from where it was 12 months ago?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I mean, again, I think it's -- the way that we look at it is, ultimately, all of the ad products that we build, whether it's the AI conversation we were having, whether that empowers new creative types, new forms of optimization, it's about ROI to our advertisers, and that sort of ultimately is what grows the Google ad business and of which YouTube also benefits, not just search over the long run. And so that's really the best way to look at it. And that's what you should expect not just from YouTube, but from Google overall in terms of how we look at it, which is ultimately, what is in the best interest of our advertisers, what are they telling us? They care about ROI on the performance side. Brand advertisers also have their success metrics that they measure in ROI terms. It's not just about views or reach, it's about how you actually hit those goals of awareness or consideration that I described in the Coach case. And that's how you should expect Google to look at that.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. Can I ask you about live events? YouTube had an NFL game last year. You have the Oscars coming in 2029. What is your appetite for continuing premium events and putting them in front of your paywall? And importantly, how has the conversation changed with rights holders as you've added some of these premium events?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I think that the best way to think about it, again, just to give you sort of some kind of inside framework on this is -- it's really about live events, as you said. And YouTube is a place -- it is -- we really are the epicenter of culture, not just because of what the creators are doing every day, but also because of these big tentpole moments that exist and live as a way is one of the few mechanisms of sort of true water cooler moments and the place where that happens is on YouTube, whether it was the Artemis launch, I'm guessing most people watched it, if you watched it live on their YouTube channel, whether it's Coachella, which was this -- it was happening at 3 in the morning on the East Coast time when Justin Bieber was on stage, yet it became the world's biggest cultural moment, his vibe session in terms of his YouTube history. And especially if you're a young person, right, like that was the culture for a week or 2. And so we see that in the data all the time. Live is a big driver of that, and that's kind of one of the thesis behind our investment, whether it's sports, as you mentioned, the Oscars because they are these cultural moments, and they get amplified when they're on YouTube because of all the fandom that happens around them that shows up in Shorts or other forms of long-form VOD content. And so -- and we look at -- I look at it sort of 3 lens, right? Like can we -- by having it on YouTube, is there a chance to expand the opportunity? So in the context of Sunday Ticket, that was -- well, you don't need a guy to install a dish on your house, right? Like you can get it with 2 taps, that's TAM expanding, right? You don't need it to be tied to another subscription, right? Like those are -- that's one piece. The second is can YouTube bring some real technological innovation? So Multiview, right? Multiview is a great example on the YouTube TV side on the sports. Well, guess what, one of the ways that people consume Coachella the most is Multiview because Coachella is this concert that's across multiple stages. Wouldn't it be great if you could see 4 stages at once. And so -- and then the third piece is our creators, like can they enhance that viewing experience. And so you saw that in the context of the NFL. You should expect to see that in the context of something like the Oscars.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. Cool. Connected TV, we touched on it before. The growth of Connected TV has been amazing. You're now tower over the #2 company, Netflix. We get a question all the time about what type of content is driving this consumption trends and talk a bit about the demographics because in the data, older viewers like myself are growing faster than even younger viewers. So can you give us under the hood on CTV, what are you seeing?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes, I mean I think at the -- so there's over 1 billion hours of watch time every single day on living room devices on YouTube globally, 200 million in the U.S. There's -- there are billions of hours of YouTube -- I mean, a Shorts watch time over the course of a month in the living room. And so at that scale, from a demographic standpoint, it's really all demographics, right? Otherwise, you're not at those types of numbers. In terms of what's driving it, I think it's back to what I said, which is can we create an experience that really allows this content to shine. And most of the content that is consumed on YouTube, on living room are from our creators, from YouTubers. That is the reality because that's what viewers, especially young viewers want to watch. So when they're turning on the TV, they're turning on YouTube, and it's their YouTube experience that they're getting. And so that's probably the most fundamental sort of profound thing that I would say about living room growth. And I think that's an area that has lots of future opportunity.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsAnd demographically, in terms of the mix, it seems like...
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesI think it's across the board.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsRight. So you're not seeing -- okay, got it. We have time for a couple more. Let me ask you about Shorts. It looks like at Meta, Reels is driving revenue acceleration pretty aggressively. Some of that could be ad load also on Reels. But to what extent can Shorts drive further monetization for YouTube? Last year, you broke the news that YouTube Shorts was monetizing...
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes, right here?
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsExactly. So I want to -- you bring some more news. But what are you seeing now in terms of the ability to monetize Shorts and where does it go from here?
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I mean, look, first and foremost, the way that we think about Shorts is it's another creative format for our creators. It's another way for all of us as viewers to enjoy their YouTube experience. It is a mobile-first experience. Although one of the fastest-growing places for Shorts is on the living room screen, believe it or not. And so that's what you should continue to see us -- that's what you should expect us to continue to see invest in is the viewer and creator experience because in my view, and I've been in the ad business for a long time, the advertising opportunities really stem from that. The nice thing about Shorts is that you can come up with formats that are less interruptive in the feed, right? And that is what you have hopefully seen in your own Shorts experience. You can even have formats like stickers. I was speaking about shopping as a growth opportunity on YouTube, but we have shopping stickers on Shorts that allow for product placement and driving shopping that way. And that's seen lots of success. We have over 500,000 creators that have tagged their videos with shopping. So in terms of the RPM trends that you were talking about, we've reached parity, not just in the U.S., but in several countries. And in some countries, we've even exceeded it, including the U.S. And so that's just a continued investment really in that full flywheel. I would really encourage folks to not just think about it from an advertising standpoint in isolation. It really is about delivering creator and viewer value first.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsOkay. So my last question, and it would not be a MoffettNathanson Conference if you don't ask about YouTube TV and the changes that you brought to linear-bundled television. You know I'm a big user. You announced 10 specialized plans. What has been the consumer response to those plans? We would have hoped that the bundle -- the Sports News bundle would have been cheaper versus the big bundle. Yes, I was looking for a real discount here on the Sports News. So talk to us about consumer adoption on that plan and maybe the hopes longer term to find more efficiencies.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYes. I mean, look, it goes back to what I said earlier about giving consumer choice. Like that was our vision with YouTube TV when it first started and then these tiers that we introduced really about just giving more choice at various price points. Lots of customers of YouTube TV are sports fans. Could we give them a tier that's sort of close to that, but lots of them are also not sports fans and do we have offerings for them, too. It's really only been launched for a couple of months now. So it's still really early, probably too early to say anything concrete about it. But it's our vision of actually giving more consumer choice. And it is -- and I don't really think about it in terms of bundling or not -- aggregation or not. For me, it's really just about consumer choice. You're describing an experience in YouTube TV. On YouTube, the main app, we also try to replicate that with things like Primetime Channels alongside the endemic YouTube content and creators that you're watching.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsDo you think we'll get to a place where we can get all our content that we subscribe to at YouTube TV, right? It still bothers me to go in and out of YouTube TV to get games here and there. So...
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesYou mean going to other apps.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsYes, I love to have a super aggregator of all my premium content in one place.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesLook, I mean, I think one of the strengths of YouTube is that, like I said, you can get everything from your 15-second Shorts from your favorite creators to 15-hour live streams to 3-hour NFL games and kind of everything in between. That is the vision. That is an intentional vision. A lot of our investment goes towards that. When we see pockets of content that are missing, we innovate. That's where YouTube TV came from, linear, live sports, live news, et cetera. That's where Primetime Channels came from. Could you get your professionally produced kind of traditional content alongside your creator content. And so that's our vision. That's our approach. We have many, many Primetime Channel partners now. We're in a handful of countries. We want to roll that out to more countries. And so that's sort of how we think about solving that particular consumer pain point.
Michael Nathanson
AnalystsNeal, thank you for being here. Congratulations on the success. I appreciate it.
Neal Mohan
ExecutivesThank you, everybody.
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