How YouTube helped us through 2020

Many of us spent more time at home in 2020 than we ever had but, even before that, there were industry-wide shifts toward streaming viewership, especially on YouTube.

Comscore data shows that over 20 million people in the UK watch YouTube on their TV each month, with the video streaming platform also used by 96% of online UK adults every month. Across 2020, for many of us, YouTube has helped shape our year, even if we weren't aware. 

Here, YouTube's Head of Culture and Trends, Kevin Allocca, explains how the platform is whatever you need it to be.

YouTube is a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but how do you describe it?

Well, the first thing I’d say is that YouTube is a distinct media, a web video is a distinct medium, and YouTube is where you go to explore and expand the boundaries of what that means. I grew up fascinated with film and TV and I think when this technology first came into our lives we were all trying to find the analogies with other media and things we had previous context for. 

We are in the early years of this as a medium and so are still trying to understand what it can be, and what it can do for us.

And the thing that I learned over 10 years of tracking trends is that web video has its own distinct qualities, but we are in the early years of this as a medium and so are still trying to understand what it can be, and what it can do for us. And that has enabled it to be this reflection of culture, because it both encapsulates everyone’s individual, personalised interests and passions, while creating a collective experience where multiple people are sharing the same thing simultaneously. Yes, it is an interactive video platform. That’s the simple definition, but I think it is that intersection of a personalised, specific delivery of content for your interests and tastes alongside this collective connection and community created around it.

Above: Kevin Allocca, Head of Culture and Trends at YouTube.

Do you think YouTube came into its own over the last 10 months because, if YouTube is a reflection of the world, 2020 is one of the few times when the whole world went through a similar experience.

I think that the role YouTube plays in daily life has evolved because of the circumstance of the world around it. This year, we’ve dealt with a lot. We have a situation in which the entire world experienced culture simultaneously, and we have a media platform that is accessible and shaped by the way the whole world uses it simultaneously. Those two things are incredibly novel, and now they’ve intersected for the first time. 

There are these core human needs that people have all around the world and there is this surprising thing where people will use media technology to solve their needs without even realising that’s what they are doing.

My team is spread all over the world. I have someone who covers the UK, I have someone who covers Germany, someone who covers France, Brazil, Japan… and we looked at all the parallels that we were seeing, and a lot of the trends we see are usually culture specific. But a lot of what we’ve seen happen this year was the same thing is happening in, say, Korea, Brazil and France. We saw these unexpected similarities which in different places. It reflected this idea that there are these core human needs that people have all around the world and there is this surprising thing where people will use media technology to solve their needs without even realising that’s what they are doing.

People aren’t thinking ‘I’m going to use YouTube to help me get through this’. No one internalises that conceptually, but they will say, ‘I got an extra hour to make dinner tonight because I am not commuting, so I’m going to watch a video on how to make this dish I’ve always wanted to make and it’s on YouTube’. Or maybe they wanted to cut their hair, or there because aren’t concerts at the moment, there's a band they like live streaming on YouTube. No one is or was sitting back and saying they were using YouTube to solve their personal needs, but that’s what those things are.

Above: Cooking videos were incredibly popular over the lockdown period as people were confined to their homes. 

There’s lots of discussion about the divisive nature of the world at the moment, but what you say shows that, on a grand scale, people are much more similar than they are different.

It really does. It’s interesting, and we are trying to make sense of this whole thing and all this data. It really started with asking what are the things we are seeing in all these different places, and what are the parallels between those things? The only way that we could really wrap our heads around it was to actually sit down with a cultural anthropologist. 

Cooking videos are as much about shaping and solidifying who we are as they are about us solving a basic daily requirement for health and nutrition.

She gave us these three different themes that she feels are the core human needs. One of them is basically self-sufficiency, how we moderate our energy, both physical and mental, and take care of ourselves. Another one is about connection, a sense of people really feeling this innate desire to feel connected to other people and be part of something that’s bigger than themselves. And then the last was about identify, the sense of self-identity and trying to protect that and evolve that.

Cooking videos are as much about shaping and solidifying who we are as they are about us solving a basic daily requirement for health and nutrition. Cooking [videos were] on the rise everywhere around the world, at the same time. If you ask anybody from any culture if they’re proud of their culinary tradition, then, of course, they are. Food is very cultural thing, and it is very connected to our identity. People think, ‘I can make this thing. It’s part of who I am’. It’s not really about food, it’s actually about us. That’s a long way of saying, essentially, the only way to make sense of all this phenomena we saw, and are seeing, is to actually not try to answer the question on how we are using technology but trying to answer the question of what do people need.

Above:

How does trend forecasting work with regards YouTube? How do you forecast trends and what are the benefits of knowing what those trends are?

We actually try to avoid trend forecasting. Really, what we are trying to do, is understand what is happening. So, I am less interested in trying to project out to the future of what’s going to happen, than in trying to understand what’s happening at the present. In terms of how we do it, it’s a combination of looking at feeds of data and information, rankings of things, applying pattern recognition and then refining and validating the hypothesis by doing data analysis.

I am less interested in trying to project out to the future of what’s going to happen, than in trying to understand what’s happening at the present.

We only established this international consortium, if you will, in the last two years, but it’s like, if we notice that five days of the last week this particular type of video is trending on YouTube, we look at the metadata of that and try to understand if it's actually something that’s one the rise. And so, we can see all over the world, and can compare these things. If you are seeing [something specific] in Australia, and seeing that in Mexico too, you can wonder if there’s something more here than what we thought. 

As for the business purpose of why we exist in this company, I think there’s a handful of applications. One is we work with the private engineering teams to refine features that you can find on the Explore tab. We also help people for research, a journalist may ask how popular cooking [videos are] on YouTube right now. Someone on my team goes and figures that out. I think the broad way of saying it is we try to help people understand YouTube for strategic reasons. Whether that’s the music industry or journalists or advertisers, even our own company. It’s basically building intelligence for business use.

Above: Brands such as DIY chain B&Q post useful content its viewers appreciate.

Do you think brands need to approach placing content on YouTube with more a sense of personality rather than as a specific advertising avenue? 

What you’re referring to is basically content marketing; how you create content and distribute it on the platform, and that’s not the same strategy for every band. I think for brands where [content marketing] does make sense, I don’t think it is necessarily about personality in isolation. I think it is about creating value for the viewer. We don’t study advertisers specifically, we are more consumer, but I will say there are lots of advertisers who make content that is helpful in some way, there’s some specific value for the user. They are authentic in their own way, they are not trying to put one over on the viewer. They are transparent about what they are and they are transparent by providing value.

Personality can be a short cut to creating that authenticity and sense of connection but I don’t think it is the only way.

If you look at the history of successful ads on YouTube, outside of YouTube’s own advertising ecosystem, you’ve got your Old Spices, your Red Bulls, your Volvo Van-Dam spot; inventive and innovative stuff. That content was entertainment, it was not just fun to watch, it was fun to discuss and maybe react to in some way. So, I think personality can be a short cut to creating that authenticity and sense of connection but I don’t think it is the only way.