In this episode of Connected Thinking, Mae, our Managing Director, sits down with Roya Zeitoune, Head of Culture & Trends at YouTube for EMEA.
With nearly 15 years at Google and 12 of those at YouTube, Roya leads a global team tracking the internet’s weird and wonderful video culture, helping brands and creators understand the shifts shaping how audiences engage.
Roya discusses the growing appetite for long-form storytelling and how brands can use it to build deeper advocacy. From the global trends shaping how audiences consume content today to the evolving definition of "mainstream" to Roya offers her perspective on where the platform is heading and what it means for brands looking to resonate across generations.
You recently spoke on a panel about how creators are redefining entertainment – what shifts are you seeing in the way audiences choose to consume content, and how are creators leading that change?
The shift has been absolutely monumental. Over the last 12 years, I’ve been tracking YouTube trends, and before that, Google Trends, so my focus has largely been on YouTube. I could never have predicted how much the dynamic would shift toward creators rather than brands or big studios. I was reading research recently that showed the majority of people, not just Gen Z or younger audiences, are now far more excited about creator releases and updates than those from big Hollywood studios. That’s mind blowing when you think about how YouTube started and how it has evolved into a true hub of entertainment.
My speciality is YouTube and I love YouTube so much, but my team is a research team and we study the internet generally, so I can't claim all of this is just YouTube. Of course, the rise of enormous creator fandoms really began on YouTube because of its first mover advantage.
I find it so exciting when I see people anticipating a new release of something, even when they’re not traditionally creator led. For example, channels like Amazing Digital Circus, an animated series created by independent creators, generate massive anticipation with every new episode. I think what really fuels it is the halo effect across the ecosystem: not only do people wait for creators to make content, they talk about waiting for it - and other creators are part of that conversation too. It becomes a self-feeding ecosystem that makes the whole thing far more exciting than entertainment used to be.
What does a day in your life look like and what are you responsible for?
Before I joined YouTube, I had done many different things. I changed jobs every couple of years because I got bored and would change completely. I worked in education and advocacy for Save the Children and left there and had a dating startup. It was really random because I wanted to do interesting stuff. YouTube is like a mirror onto the world, but it is also a window through which you can see the world. If you are interested in people, anthropology, popular culture, politics, history, and everything, there is an entire world to study every single day. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do it.
The first thing in the morning, we as a team catch up. I have a team based in lots of different countries across EMEA, and we sit within a global team where people are all around the world. We have group chats where people are constantly sharing things. Because it is a global team, it never stops, so you get updates from the night before. I usually spend the early part of my day trying to catch up on anything big that has happened across different communities, languages, and countries. EMEA does not operate in a vacuum. We are connected to US trends, Latin American trends, Afrobeats in music, and Indian trends because India is such a huge market for the internet. Trying to catch up on everything is impossible, but I do my best at the beginning of the day.
Then it could be anything from doing something like this. I'm fortunate to be invited to speak on panels or give talks in places. Aside from that, I will often spend quite a lot of my day doing research myself. There'll be something that sparked my interest, so I'll spend some time digging into something that has come up.
We also work closely with engineering teams. Part of our remit is understanding what is happening on the internet beyond YouTube and helping bring those topics into people’s feeds on YouTube. On a daily basis we use different data sources to see what the conversation is about. We combine those topics with people’s personalized interests, which helps feed what appears on their homepage. We are constantly studying the internet and seeing what people are talking about.
Research released by The New York Times and Forbes showed that young people have a stronger sense of belonging and community through platforms like YouTube. They derive more value and benefit from it because of that sense of belonging and identity, where you can find your people. That makes it heartening and interesting to understand perspectives from around the world.
From your perspective, how are platforms like YouTube shaping what we define as "mainstream" culture today, and who’s driving that change: the creators, the audience, or the algorithm?
We have shifted, maybe inadvertently, because creators have shifted people’s ideas of entertainment massively. What I find interesting is that MrBeast was on the cover of Time Magazine as the most watched person in the world, and yet many people still do not know who he is.
It's a strange time to be in the world of entertainment. Some people still struggle to acknowledge that internet fame has a legitimate place in entertainment.
The influence and fandoms around these creators are so large that ignoring them is risky. The democratisation of entertainment has unfolded in a way where things people never imagined would become popular do. Instead of traditional gatekeepers deciding what is popular, it is now people powered. That creates a whole new world.
What’s exciting you most about the future of creator-led content, especially when it comes to long-form vs. short-form storytelling?
There’s so much that is really exciting right now. What has been most interesting over the last year is the increase in participative content.
When YouTube first started, it was all UGC. It was our 20th anniversary this year, and we were looking at what the YouTube homepage looked like on the first day. The homepage was a series of random home videos of people. Someone had put up a video of the otters in New York Zoo, and it had six views or something, it was all just really random UGC content.
Then we went on this journey where the birth of the creator happened, being completely transparent, we were like, ‘Oh God, how are we going to compete with TV?’ but it became more of a domain of people who belonged, who were professional YouTubers.
I think what has really started happening and is undoubtedly impacted by the rise and popularity of TikTok, is that they brought back that element of whoever you are, you have a right to upload stuff.
That behaviour has started coming back across all sorts of different platforms, but we definitely started seeing it happening on YouTube again, largely because of the release of Shorts. We’ve always said YouTube is a place for everyone, everyone is welcome. But we’re really seeing that core value coming through again, I love that it is normalising everybody being in the conversation again.
As for the distinction between long form and short form, I love both. I think sometimes people make assumptions that younger audiences prefer short form, and often we disparage younger people and say they have no attention span, etc., but actually that doesn’t play out in our data. A lot of them are watching longer-form content.
There was some research that came out recently that showed watch time on content over 20 minutes increased among people under 24. When asked if they had 30 minutes, more than double said they would prefer one long piece of content. Often people intend to watch for five minutes and end up watching for 30.
I think what’s particular to us on YouTube is that because you can find every different kind of format in one place, there’s a really symbiotic relationship between long form and short form. Many creators have successfully uploaded a short-form teaser that then draws a lot of people to their longer-form content, and in many cases they’re finding a whole new audience that way.
In the same way, long pieces of content sometimes create memes that come off them and spur a whole new world of creativity. That’s really exciting. There are many formats such as podcasts and livestreams, allowing creators to engage audiences in different ways. Podcasting is growing rapidly, and younger people and women are becoming both hosts and audiences, which is different from 10 years ago.
Do you think the line between creator and brand is blurring? Are we moving towards a future where brands are expected to behave more like creators themselves?
I definitely think so. It plays out in a lot of the data. People’s expectations are that brands really get it now, and I think some do. A lot of creators actually become brands themselves. Some obviously sell their normal merch, but a lot of people launch whole products, I think there is a real blurring of those lines.
There are also a lot of creators who do brilliant collaborations with different brands. One of the most interesting ones I saw was when Emma Chamberlain collaborated with Louis Vuitton. That was so eye-opening because she had a reputation of being this really raw creator.
She started when she was sixteen, probably didn’t think it was going to be a thing, and just wanted something to do and then she became so popular. For Louis Vuitton, this traditional heritage French fashion brand, to collaborate with her, I thought that was fascinating.
It gave them real legitimacy because it was something so fresh and so different for them. For Emma, it suddenly made her seem like she’d made it. She already, of course, had success with different things, but because that was such a significant and different collaboration, it brought a whole new perspective to people on what she was doing.
It also made people realise that this whole conversation that had been going on for a very long time about what quality is, and what it means, is very subjective. It is in the eye of the beholder. It’s super entertaining, and for her audience, it really hit the mark.
There is a real blurring of the lines, and you see it play out in lots of different ways, either creators launching their own brands or collaborating with brands.
There was a really interesting collaboration that I saw with UK creators Beta Squad, who I love—they’re really funny. They were given a partnership with Footasylum. Instead of collaborating so that the creators would be talking about trainers and pushing products, they hosted those creators on the Footasylum channel and allowed them to do whatever they wanted.
They were chatting and having funny discussions about things that were important to young people and weren’t talking about trainers at all. But the association for the audience between their favourite creators and the brand was so strong that it really helped establish Footasylum in the minds of younger people as being cool, edgy, and interesting.
As for brands acting like creators, I think that’s going to become the norm.
We had a really interesting example recently with Wimbledon, which, in many people’s minds, is a very traditional institution. Over the last few years they went hard on it. They were creating a lot of content that felt creator-led. They had a creator who already made content on her own channel making content on their behalf, talking about other aspects of Wimbledon, like the fashion.
In terms of driving engagement, it was really effective. Wimbledon undoubtedly knows that they need to continue to appeal to younger people, because their tickets are traditionally seen as inaccessible for many. They need to find an audience in different ways, build engagement, and hope that the young people they engage now will go on to aspire to attend in the future.
I think we’re going to see that happening across the board with a lot of brands you wouldn’t even expect. It can happen in different ways, where the brand is leading it, but you also see brands jumping on trends and bringing a whole new perspective as an organisation, because they are seen as reflecting cultural relevance.
Favourite book or podcast you’d recommend?
A book I found helpful is Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. It explores how we think about status and offers a different perspective on it.
Best piece of advice you’ve received?
The best piece of advice I received is to reframe “I have to” as “I get to.” Instead of saying I have to take the Central line, think about how fortunate it is to have that infrastructure. Instead of saying I have to go to a meeting, think about how fortunate it is to have a job. I have found this shift in mindset so helpful, it's very important to have a positive mindset!
