All that means is more ad sales. For YT, that’s grrrrrreat. For those selling ads, not so much. But to me, this is no different than people buying ads on broadcast at 3am.
What are "sleep sounds"? Like sounds of others sleeping?
Do you experience silence anything during the day or any other time? I couldn't imagine having sounds while trying to sleep, it's my quiet time when I can fully focus on what's inside my head, and outside sounds tend to be distracting. But still interesting how we all are very different, no right or wrong :)
I throw on video game let's plays or long form retrospectives. If I'm left to myself, I'll end up keeping myself awake thinking about stuff.
Funny enough, I usually spend more time picking what to sleep to than I actually spend awake once it starts playing. Most times I'm dead asleep within the first minute or two after spending five minutes making selections. If it goes quiet, I wake up.
> If I'm left to myself, I'll end up keeping myself awake thinking about stuff
That's the best part of disconnecting and going to bed, being cozy in the darkness with nothing but your thoughts and emotions. Interesting that others try to avoid that, thanks for sharing :)
Depends on the type of thoughts that frequent your mind. Dozing off to sleep thinking about chatting with friends is quite different from worrying about your ailing family member. I assure you that the latter isn't something to look forward to for most people.
ocean waves, the soft noises of a train moving, etc.
I used to live very close to a subway station and the sound of it rattling became familiar and comforting eventually, so when I'm out in the countryside now it feels very quiet and I supplement with a white noise machine. It seems popular to use YouTube for a bespoke version of this - there's tons of 8 hour looping videos of rain storms, oceans, etc.
Yeah, this is where my money is on the watch time. I've also seen things like doctor's office waiting rooms running through a curated playlist endlessly.
Not to mention people falling asleep means that all ads will play unskipped, regardless of length. That means they have data that non-zero amounts of people are watching the whole of the extremely long skippable ads that get placed (more than once I've seen 90+ minute ads appear).
> people who use youtube as a sleep aid - don't you get woken up by ads?
I pay for Premium for that reason. I don't have any other TV/streaming services, so while I don't especially like giving Google money, I use it enough that the expense is well-justified.
If YouTube Music wasn't so shit, I'd agree with you. Right now I'm holding off on YouTube Premium only for the fact that they want me to pay for YouTube Music too (which I don't need nor want). If they had a cheaper plan without YouTube Music I'd jump on that immediately.
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Another key one - more TV-length, high production value content on YouTube. The platform doesn't have 3 minute home recordings anymore. Videos by top creators nowadays rival budgets of major TV shows and movies.
Also, you can watch YouTube on your TV and then fiddle around on your phone without being left with a floating window that both obscures your other content and is too small to see some details in the video.
Think that's more to the point. Where people watch YouTube on TV, instead of traditional channels or cable, and they are free to screw around on their smartphones. There is no telling what people are actually paying attention to, because it seems many are just running multiple devices for the sake of it. Devices are always on, then used or watched whenever something comes to mind or catches their attention.
This feels more significant than I'd expect it to? We are dominated by reporting about how our phones are growing to define our interactions with media. To have a trend that is bucking that is surprising.
Terrible headline - the article says nothing about users. It does not link to Youtubes finding that TV is overtaking mobile. That news is here, and it's by WATCH TIME, not user count as claimed. https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/our-big-bets-for-2025/
I think TV>Mobile for watch time is less surprising because of the nature of content you'd watch on the TV (longer form, background stuff).
User count would be surprising. And this is from someone who primarily uses their TV for Youtube.
- There are more mobile devices than TVs. A family of four may have 1 or 2 TVs but they have 4+ phones/tablets. Similarly, you need another phone to accomodate another viewer, whereas you do not need another TV.
- TV accounts are often shared so even if you had multiple people using the TV there is a fair chance it would be squashed to 1 user
- Youtube content is increasingly short form which fits better with mobile than sitting down on the couch. All Youtube shorts are designed to be consumed on the phone, for example.
- You always have your phone with you. You're usually only around your TV a handful of hours a day.
- You are often getting funneled to YouTube via a link from somewhere else on your phone. Reddit, X, group text, etc. No chance of that while using your TV for something else.
Fair points. I'm still surprised at how strong television viewership remains, but my guess is that is poor priors on my part?
Specifically to youtube, I am also a bit surprised at it being used heavily on televisions. It is not a pleasant experience there. I have a hard time on phone, but at least there the popup keyboard is a bit more usable.
Granted, saying that, it occurs to me that i don't actually know the usage of youtube for videos. Short form content makes sense. You just keep flipping to the next of somewhat related content. I suppose news consumption is similar? We have turned news content into short form videos?
Depends on the content. There is a lot of long form content but yeah shorts and other types of things ("how do I do xyz", etc.) is just not the type of thing I'm looking to watch on a TV.
I wouldn't say this is a sign of declining mobile usage, but rather that people have YouTube videos playing constantly on the TV while they're scrolling around on their phone.
This is really just part of the switch from broadcast/cable to internet-native media. It's very noticeable when you watch terrestrial TV how many adverts are clearly targeted at the over-65s, the market is literally dying out.
People still have televisions and now most come with embedded android and YouTube. I don’t find this surprising that people are leaving cable and using internet streaming for their “tv consumption”.
I wonder what the actual numbers are, especially considering PC viewers.
My guess is that it's something like 15% on mobile, 16% on TV, and 69% on desktop/laptop etc.
At least if you consider played minutes. I know many people watch short clips etc. on their phone, but the sheer amount of people watching let's plays while working, or streaming lo-fi music while coding is probably immense compared to that
Is that something people who aren't streamers actually do? I don't think I've seen that in person, ever, but then maybe I'm not the most social creature out there so might just be my bubble.
Personally, I only watch YouTube on the TV. When I'm on the computer I'm either working, gaming or reading, the phone only gets used for phone/texting and social media while in the bathroom, and the TV is basically for normal TV/YouTube/TV shows/movies.
yeah, don't know, it was just an example. People stream YouTube while doing other things (playing, working, coding) all the time. I didn't want to put too much focus on the "Let's Play" part, it was the first thing that came to my mind :)
We have a handful of coders in our company and it's rare to enter their offices and not see something playing on the second screen.
> yeah, don't know, it was just an example. People stream YouTube while doing other things (playing, working, coding) all the time. I didn't want to put too much focus on the "Let's Play" part, it was the first thing that came to my mind :)
That'd be very distracting to me, programming is (usually) a deep focus thing for me, having moving pictures right next to where I work would lead me to getting nothing done :P Interesting to hear though, probably should visit an office to see how it's changed since I last was in one.
you might not be aware of things like LoFiGirl[1], which is especially designed for such a use-case and not distracting at all. In any case you could always just minimize the tab and listen, that wouldprobably also cound as "watching" in YouTube's statistics
Yeah, I am, proud listener since 2018 or something (used to be called ChilledCow IIRC), but I never have that in the foreground. I'd still find that distracting as it has movements (even if they're tiny), which my eyes seems to be unnaturally attracted to.
yeah that's why I think the actual numbers would be interesting. Are there more kids being fed YouTube on a tablet, or developers/students listening to lo-fi while coding/learning/writing essays :)
This feels like an AI-written article. The name on the byline, Sarah Fielding, has posted 4 articles today already[0]. Her Twitter[1] does not have any posts after Jan 6, and none of her tweets link to Engadget articles. Her bio does list Engadget though (but her personal website does not![2]
This is the only 'evidence' provided, and it definitely doesn't match the claim in the headline.
> Nielsen, a market research company that's been reporting on TV viewing habits for decades, says that YouTube has been the number one service in streaming watch time for the last two years.
Regularly watching YouTube on Apple TV, but.. does it play ads more frequently compared to on desktop OS? (makes sense, since context switching to another form of entertainment in another tab doesn't exist there - still, I wish it would be en par)
I’m not sure if the amount of ads is different, but the quality of ads is definitely different.
The ads on TV are “skippable” in the sense that you watch 2 minutes of ads, and then in the last 10 seconds, you can skip to the end.
Any time I use my TV for YouTube now, I just connect my laptop to the TV so I don’t have to deal with those insane ads.
It’s extremely clear that YouTube is trying to maximize ad watch time, while keeping the acknowledgment by the user that they watched the ad, by acknowledging they’re paying attention enough to press “Skip”
If you’re not using a blocker on desktopOS, then probably about the same. Unless YT knows your on the couch and much less likely to switch away so they make loner ad blocks for TV than desktops??? I could see them playing with this kind of logic, but I have no idea if they do anything like that
I pay for YouTube premium now so I haven’t experienced this in some time but I did notice that YouTube would load its longest ads (I.e. Ads that are 1hr+ in length) late at night, around the time I would tend to fall asleep on the couch watching YouTube. I’m sure a PM out there is proud of coming up with this
Another perspective, based on the list of most watched youtube videos [1] - a lot of parents just let it run on the TV for their kids/babies. I used to do it for a while, as well as other parents I knew.
For privacy reasons I would strongly suggest only using an external HDMI device for streaming (and turning off your TV's internet connection), and at that point you can use anything you want and aren't limited to the apps on your TV.
I wonder how similar is the TV user experience and the content that gets watched there - to the desktop/mobile user experience and content. Is anyone here using YouTube in both contexts?
Personally I watch on my laptop or iPhone; I usually look at reviews or short tutorials, I often fast forward, stop mid clip, or switch to another window - which is also why I don't watch YouTube on a TV at all.
I use YouTube in 3 contexts, mobile, laptop and TV. Since the remote slows down my inputs the most I watch longer content (e.g 20 minute or longer videos) on TV. I do notice that YouTube plays longer ads, somewhere around a minute’s worth, on TV. They likely realized that consumers are used to putting up with long commercial breaks in this medium.
I also use it for TV-equivalent live streams. The Eurovision song contest has recently started streaming most of the national-level pre-contests on its youtube channel, which is considerably easier than trying to juggle fifty different national broadcaster sites which are not in English and may be geolocked.
TV experience is vastly inferior to mobile. If you watch YouTube on Apple TV, they definitely make it known you're a second class citizen. The app is clunky, slow and the video player isn't the easiest to scrub (especially if you want to navigate "chapters"). Also it's baffling how you can't use YouTube as a music app with repeat/shuffle controls even though they have a dedicated "Music" section.
For anyone considering whether watching YouTube on TV might be better or worse than on the phone, I'd like to point out SmartTube: https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube
Ad blocking, integrated sponsorblock, and other desirable features.
I have a smart tv at home. And all its used for is YouTube (no-ad client) + a client for occasional movies. That's all it does. No live streaming. Everything I want to watch is on YouTube.
The TV shows that I am interested in watching are uploaded to YouTube by TV channels themselves.
I watch Youtube almost exclusively on TV. It's great as a cable replacement. The key for me was when my new TV actually had a decent built in TV OS and hardware. So scrolling and using the app isn't painful like it has been on past TVs or external plugin devices.
I regularly watch my youtube subscriptions on the TV when folding clothes, etc.
It's so nice with some of the 4k content. And some channels (like Modern Wisdom) do these "cinematic" episodes that are also a feast for the eyes, not just the rest of your brain.
I regularly watch on the TV. The only drawback is the TV isn't capable of varying playback speed and some of my subscriptions are better at 1.5x. But if I just have it on while doing the dishes or folding the clothes then it's good enough.
I watch almost everything on my computer or smartphone but we have young kids at home and the TV is constantly streaming Youtube content throughout the day. By that measure, it clocks more watch time than anything I would stream on my devices.
I watch youtube 90% of the time I used to watch cable TV or Netflix. It is much better: most interesting TV shows are already on the platform and I can choose what to watch based on my interests, not on what the TV channel is scheduling.
They're uploading all the Mythbusters episodes to youtube for free as well. It wouldn't surprise me if in another 5 years much historical tv will be on youtube to watch for free.
I honestly refuse to believe this unless I see the source (which is not listed).
Maybe in the US sure, but take any country in Asia or Latin America and I can guarantee you mobile usage skyrockets. Can't say anything certain about EU, but I'd assume from my few experiences there it should be a 50/50 split.
I couldn't find any articles about comparisons between mobile and TV usage. There are some saying 'YouTube TV usage is at a high time high', but it associates it with the presidential election and some sports events...
The former I can see getting some views outside of the US, but sports events no one gives a shit outside of the US, so I think it's pretty clear their articles are US only.
Nielsen do consumer survey (and have done for decades): they take a selection of volunteer households, and install a box which monitors what they watch on TV. This statistical sample is used for estimating TV viewing figures. I guess they've discovered that much of the time the TV isn't showing TV any more.
And yet last night youtube broke itself on my Nvidia SHIELD by turning all video thumbnails into a larger size than the entire screen, such that no text or title is video nor even the entire thumbnail itself. So instead of scrolling a feed of possible shows, I get the center 60% of one image at a time.