Wondering what’s coming next for YouTube, and how you should plan your digital marketing accordingly? YouTube’s Chief Product Officer has shared an overview of focal areas for 2022, which include new development for creator funding, evolved live shopping, the metaverse and more.
Live-Streaming
Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, says that live-streaming will be a key focus for the app in 2022. Mohan announced that daily live-stream watch time has increased massively between January 2020 and December 2021; YouTube plan on capitalising on this through certain elements like live-stream shopping and collaborative livestreaming.
YouTube Shorts
Shorts happens to be another key focus area for YouTube in 2022.
YouTube reported last month that Shorts surpassed 5 trillion all-time views, underpinning the rising interest in short-form video content. YouTube is keen to build on this area in attempt to hold onto its position of leading online video provider.
As said by YouTube:
“Building on a feature we introduced last year that lets you remix audio from videos across YouTube, we’ll introduce new capabilities that empower creators to express themselves even more – new video effects, editing tools, and more. And to help Shorts creators engage with their audience more personally, we’ll also introduce the ability to reply to individual comments by creating a Short.”
Along with this, YouTube is exploring additional Shorts Monetisation options, including improved exposure for Shorts stars in BrandConnect, the expansion of Super Chat to Shorts Clips and shopping options within the Shorts format.
The Metaverse
Nohan has also give some hints of the metaverse:
“We’re thinking big about how to make viewing more immersive. The first area in which you can expect to see an impact is gaming, where we’ll work to bring more interactions to games and make them feel more alive. It’s still early days, but we’re excited to see how we can turn these virtual worlds into a reality for viewers.”
