YouTube takes over the living room: Viewers stream over a billion hours a day

The big picture: YouTube has come a long way since its inception in 2005. From its humble beginnings as a simple video-sharing platform to navigating challenges like the misstep with original content, Google's media hub has continuously evolved to stay relevant in an ever-changing entertainment landscape. This year, YouTube made a significant push into the living room, and the effort seems to have paid off in a big way.

Kurt Wilms, senior director of product management for YouTube on TV, revealed in an end-of-year recap that viewers globally streamed more than one billion hours of content each day on their televisions in 2024. As it turns out, what people are watching is just as important as where they are watching it.

Watch times for sports content increased more than 30 percent this year as viewers increasingly turned to the streaming platform for post-game interviews and highlights. Kids programs also gained momentum on YouTube in 2024, but it's a different kind of content viewership that might come as the biggest surprise of all.

Podcasts were all the rage on YouTube this year. What started as an audio format has since evolved into video, and viewers can't get enough. YouTube users watched over 400 million hours of podcasts monthly via living room devices. It would seem as if the lines between audio and video podcasts are blurring, and content creators are turning to a multimedia storytelling approach to keep viewers engaged. As Wilms put it, people are tuning in to podcasts much like they used to watch late-night talk shows.

To be clear, it's no accident that living room viewership is taking off. YouTube is no doubt pushing hard for a spot in the space and content creators are responding. In 2024, the number of videos uploaded in 4K to cater to modern television sets increased by more than 35 percent. Wilms added that the number of creators making the majority of their revenue from content viewed on a TV is up more than 30 percent year on year.