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YouTube says TV is passe; announces 1 bn unique visitors per month
MUMBAI: For long, traditional linear TV professionals have been kind of pooh-poohing the emergence of YouTube as a challenge to their traditional business model and as the destination for video consumption. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt however cautions TV executives that the TV vs YouTube – if ever there was one – is over and has conclusively swung in favour of the online streaming portal.
Speaking to advertisers in New York on Wednesday night at an initiative titled NewFronts (digital media‘s version of the TV tradition of promoting programming and selling ads); he disclosed that YouTube was now crossing a billion visitors a month. Last month‘s figures from YouTube claimed that almost one of every two people on the World Wide Web now uses the video streaming site, making it the third largest country in the world behind China and India.
Google executives at the event said that visitors are watching more than six billion hours of video content on YouTube every month. That‘s a humungous number, which equals to one hour a month for every human on earth. Just three months ago, the figure was four billion. Schmidt expects the figure to go up soon and told attendees to wait “till the numbers rise to six to seven billion. The future is now for YouTube,” he said.
Executives point out that a good proportion of the visitors are those under forty – the connected to the internet generation; and that there is no better medium to reach out to them than YouTube.
“I thought that YouTube was like TV, but it isn‘t. I was wrong,” said YouTube‘s global head of content Robert Kyncl, “TV is one-way. YouTube talks back. TV means reach. YouTube means engagement.” He further added.
Schmidt explained that YouTube is not a replacement for something we know. “It‘s a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms,” he pointed out.
DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg made an appearance at the event to announce that his company had earlier in the day signed a deal to acquire AwesomenessTV, a popular teen focused YouTube network, for $33 million.
YouTube meanwhile brought in its troops to coax brands to snap up media on the site, put in sponsorship dollars behind it and build channels. They cited a study saying that brands “that invest about 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their media budget on YouTube post a one per cent to three per cent sales rise.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
