As young audiences spend more time on social and streaming platforms, UK broadcasters are embracing YouTube as a must-have in their distribution toolkit.

They are treating YouTube as a significant platform akin to Sky and Virgin Media, and spending time and resource on understanding how to get their content to ‘play’ better on the world’s biggest streaming platform, and how to monetise it more effectively.

Channel 4, far and away the broadcaster leading the YouTube charge in the UK, is increasing its volume of content on the platform as part of its target to double all social views by 2030.

Some 40% of C4’s 16 to 34 audience watch its shows on C4 streaming and other online platforms, rather than its linear channels, and chief content officer Ian Katz predicts this will tip above 50% next year.

Viewing of Hollyoaks on YouTube is up 34% year on year – there have been 3.5 million global views of full episodes on the platform – while YouTube views of all genres of C4 content are up 43%. Celebs Go Dating and Made In Chelsea (pictured top) are already “substantially streaming shows”, says Katz.

C4’s Paris 2024 Paralympic Games coverage generated 41 million views across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, with more than 2.4 million live streams and 2.1 million non-live streams recorded on C4’s YouTube channel alone.

“Rather than cannibalising audiences, YouTube provides significant incremental revenues and a ‘marketing halo’ for C4’s output”

C4’s push in the past 18 months has been to prioritise longer-form content, including linking episodes together to create ‘ultra-long episodes’, because that offers better monetisation. Katz won’t be drawn on further Hollyoaks-style distribution deals (where YouTube gets day-and-date distribution with C4 platforms), but if the economics are right, this is surely the way forward.

Rather than cannibalising audiences, C4 says, YouTube provides significant incremental revenues and a “marketing halo” for its output. With linear TV advertising inventory of less value for targeting young audiences, C4’s strategy is to reach them where they are spending their viewing time – and a lot of that is on YouTube.

A strong commercial deal with YouTube has given C4 “sovereignty” over the ad sales of its content on the platform, where the broadcaster can cross-sell with its streaming service ad inventory, says chief operations officer Jonathan Allen.

Broadcasters are working with advertisers to create branded content and monetise programming clips. Britain’s Got Talent auditions are among ITV’s biggest trending YouTube clips. But like the BBC, ITV is protective of its intellectual property, and its ITVX service, and limits its YouTube output accordingly.

Meanwhile, C4’s YouTube content contributes double-digital millions of pounds of revenue to the broadcaster’s top line. More significantly, this revenue is growing at 30-40% a year.

Up to 26% of UK YouTube viewing this year was on connected TVs, up from 15% in 2017, according to the ‘YouTube: Becoming More TV-like’ report from Enders Analysis.

At Mipcom in October, ITV launched Zoo 55, a digital content label that will help ITV Studios deliver more content to streaming and social platforms. ITV says shows like Hell’s Kitchen and The Voice generated 2 billion views on YouTube last year, across 140 owned and operated channels.

For producers, this embracing of YouTube presents challenges. Take C4’s The Gathering – a streaming hit, but less so on the linear channel, it created a recommissioning headache and was ultimately cancelled.

So far, it looks like C4 is managing to navigate the streaming transition and is leaning into monetising YouTube. In terms of viewer minutes across all platforms, C4 is up by 21% and is the strongest of the top six commercial streamers, ahead of ITV, Sky, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon.