YouTube is rolling out a major redesign of its app over the next six months that caters to the way people are increasingly watching content on the platform now — on their smart TVs.
Why It Hits: As user-generated content becomes more cinematic and mainstream, YouTube’s glow-up feels like a blurring of the line between the “premium” movies and shows of the professional entertainment industry and content made by digital creators.
Behind the Curtain: YouTube wants to feel a little more like Netflix.
On the YouTube TV app, the platform will soon roll out “immersive previews,” which generate a cinematic trailer of videos that will automatically play on a creator’s page.
Channels will also get a more prominent “subscribe” button, and content will now be organized by episodes and seasons so that they feel like TV shows.
The app will automatically generate QR codes for links in video descriptions so viewers can easily navigate to them (a feature that could make ecommerce skyrocket).
The Future: YouTube clearly has dreams of dominating a bigger screen, especially after Nielsen reported that YouTube accounts for 10.6% of all TV viewing last month (Netflix accounted for 7.9%). Additionally, revenue tied to TV viewership has jumped 30% for creators over the past year and 400% over three years… making a redesign a winning combo for creators and advertisers. With so much focus on TV, maybe YouTube will even try to relaunch its Originals program… but this time, starring popular creators.
Go Deeper: YouTube didn’t forget about its community-building — introducing a Discord-like chatroom on creator pages and a fresh promotional tool for smaller creators.
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