iWorld
YouTube crosses a billion hours of viewing on TV daily globally in 2024
MUMBAI: Hopefully, this will settle the argument once and for all. It’s not Amazon Prime, it’s not Netflix, it’s actually YouTube which is dominating the living room. The latest end of the year report released by the Alphabet-owned streaming platform shows that globally viewers streamed over a billion hours of content on their TVs daily. A billion, yes, please , don’t fall of your chair, it was a billion hours, that makes it about 365 billion hours of viewing in 2024 on TV screens for YouTube. This was revealed by senior director product management YouTube on TV Kurt Wilms in a blog post on the YouTube site.
Content that viewers traditionally watch on TV, like sports and kids programs, gained momentum on YouTube this year, says a blog rounding up YouTube’s viewership trends. Watch time of sports content, YouTube says grew 30 per cent year over year, as users visited it to get their line up of clips, highlights, and post-game interviews, all in one place. That is going to sky rocket in the coming year if creators take to Watch With which it has begun piloting. Watch With is a service which allows influencers to provide live commentary, analysis, and real time reactions to games and events, for their audience. It transforms creators into sports casters.
YouTube says podcast watching is growing rapidly on TVs. Viewers watched over 400M hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices. They’ve been tuning into podcasts similarly to how one would tune into a late-night talk show. The lines between audio-only podcasts and videos have blurred, and more creators are evolving to a multimedia storytelling approach to deepen connection with their audiences on YouTube, says the streamer.
The surge in living room viewership is no accident. The share of videos uploaded to YouTube in 4K is up by over 35 per cent year over year, as creators prioritize high-quality viewing experiences that truly shine on TV screens. And that investment is paying off: the number of creators making a majority of their revenue from TV is up more than 30 per cent year over year.
To further fuel this growth and support creators, YouTube recently made it even easier for viewers to subscribe to their favorite channels while watching on TV by adding the subscribe button directly to the video player. Early tests of this streamlined button show more than a 40 per cent increase in net subscribers through TVs.
Here’s more: families continued to watch together on TVs in 2024. After rolling out an option to easily switch between YouTube and YouTube Kids profiles on TV directly from the YouTube app last year, parents had expressed that they wanted better control. And the streamer is gearing up to introduce a new parent code feature that gives parents the power to prevent kids from accessing content that might not be age-appropriate.
(The picture is courtesy the Hathway Cable and Datacom annual report)
iWorld
Pocketful appoints Prateek Singh as CEO to drive next growth phase
Ex-Bajaj Broking executive to scale digital investing platform in India
MUMBAI: Pocketful has appointed Prateek Singh as its chief executive officer, marking a key leadership move as the company looks to scale its presence in India’s fast-evolving investment market.
Backed by the three-decade legacy of Pace Group, Pocketful is positioning the appointment as a strategic step to accelerate growth and strengthen its foothold among retail investors.
Singh brings over 13 years of experience in building digital financial platforms, with expertise spanning customer acquisition, product development and business expansion. He joins from Bajaj Broking, where he served as chief growth officer and played a key role in enhancing the company’s digital capabilities and platform experience.
Commenting on the appointment, Pocketful co-founder Sarvam Goel said, “Prateek’s appointment represents an essential milestone for Pocketful as we expand our operations and strengthen our position in the Indian investment market.” He added that Singh’s experience aligns closely with the company’s vision of building a user-focused, technology-driven platform.
For his part, Singh said, “I am truly excited to join Pocketful at such a pivotal stage of its growth journey,” highlighting the rising retail participation and shift towards digital investing in India. He added that the focus will be on simplifying the investing experience and enabling more informed participation in capital markets.
Pocketful offers zero brokerage on equity delivery trades, along with no account opening charges and lifetime zero annual maintenance fees, positioning itself as an accessible platform for new-age investors. It also caters to active traders with advanced tools and features such as margin trading and its in-house intelligence layer, Pocketful GPT, designed to assist with trade ideas and portfolio analysis.
The company has recently expanded into mutual funds, signalling its ambition to evolve into a full-stack investment platform. With Singh at the helm, Pocketful is looking to ride the wave of India’s growing retail investor base and sharpen its competitive edge in the crowded brokerage space.
