- YouTube is now a major player in TV, surpassing platforms like Netflix in viewership.
- YouTubers are starting to develop scripted shows, and the platform is shedding advertiser stigma.
- Hollywood is also adapting to the new media ecosystem and working with influencers.
A new golf comedy called "Shanked," which follows the hijinks at a country club where employees clash with pampered members, made its debut this month. The first episode runs about 20 minutes and resembles a low-budget comedy you might have once seen on Comedy Central.
But it's not on cable. It's on YouTube.
Welcome to 2025, when the big question in Hollywood isn't whether YouTube can work in the living room, but rather, how much of the entertainment landscape can it conquer.
"Shanked" isn't the only scripted show on YouTube, with top creators like Dhar Mann and Alan Chikin Chow making TV-like series for the platform.
Meanwhile, streamers like Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video are also updating their strategies, both by taking cues from cable TV — with ads and costly live sports — and seeing how they can mine social media for creator talent.
For the creators of "Shanked," YouTube was a no-brainer. Ryan Horrigan of production company London Alley said he saw a lack of low-budget comedies on TV at the same time YouTube was increasingly favoring 20-minute episodic series. Why not a comedy, he thought.
James Lynch, a comedian who co-created and stars in the show, said he felt the lines between entertainment platforms were increasingly blurring.
"We love shows like 'Severance,' but every time I go to a friend's house, there's always something on YouTube," he said.
Google-owned YouTube has nurtured a creator economy that Goldman Sachs estimated would grow to about $480 billion by 2027. Many in the entertainment and advertising world dismissed YouTube as a repository for amateur videos and movie trailers until it became the No. 1 viewed platform on TVs, per Nielsen, ahead of the "real TV" companies Netflix, Disney, and Prime Video.
As YouTube and TV begin to converge, it looks like the Hollywood system as we know it will never be the same. But how the ecosystem will look when the dust settles is much more difficult to parse.
YouTube is encouraging episodic series
Lately, YouTube has been rolling out tools and features to encourage creators to make shows for the living room. It's also doing more to match advertisers to creators to support the kinds of shows you're used to seeing on TV.
At Brandcast, YouTube's big annual presentation to the advertising community, it underlined the point by showing off top creators like IShowSpeed and Michelle Khare, who are making episodic series. And it's making a big push to win an Emmy to prove it can support quality TV.
Viewership is one thing, but advertising, the lifeblood of entertainment, is another. Many major brands still want to be associated with buzzy scripted shows and movies that drive the mainstream conversation, like "The White Lotus," and most creators aren't close to that yet. Only a handful, like MrBeast and Dude Perfect, are making Hollywood-style productions. AI tools could reduce that friction, though, by cutting time and costs from video production.
"Creator content is dominating TV watch time — not just on phones, but on the biggest screens in the house, replacing what used to be traditional television. Yet brands are still spending like it's 2015, chasing impressions over impact," said Nick Cicero, founder of Mondo Metrics, a media measurement company.
Advertisers are closing the gap, though.
Ad holding company giant WPP recently estimated that creators would earn $185 billion between direct brand deals and platform revenue share, surpassing ad spending on TV companies like Disney and Paramount.
Top ad spender Unilever also said it would move to spend 50% of its advertising on social media platforms, up from about 30%, and work with 20 times more influencers.
Can Hollywood adapt?
YouTube's growth could be a problem for Hollywood, which is built on direct ownership of IP and entertainment that moves the culture but costs a ton.
Studios and streamers aren't spending like they were when everyone was trying to catch Netflix, but they still need new stuff to keep viewers coming back and capture younger audiences. Creator-led shows offer one way forward.
But can they pull it off? There are promising signs.
Amazon is the most prominent example of a company betting huge on a creator. It spent more than $100 million to make MrBeast's "Beast Games," which became its most-watched unscripted show, and just renewed it for two more seasons.
Netflix has done deals with The Sidemen, kids' educator Ms. Rachel, and more. Warner Bros. Discovery's HBO Max has a new reality show starring Jake Paul and his brother, Logan, "Paul American." And Disney's Hulu has a hit in "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives."
Entertainment companies have gotten more sophisticated about how they work with creators. They're tapping them for their ideas rather than simply looking for a piece of their audience, in contrast with some past flopped creator experiments. Netflix is looking at YouTubers as producers as well as on-screen talent, an unscripted agent told Business Insider. NBCUniversal's Peacock just announced a slate of shows developed by creators via an accelerator program. Tubi has an initiative called Stubios to nurture up-and-coming filmmakers.
Media and entertainment companies are also looking at other forms of low-cost content, like soapy mini-dramas and video podcasts.
There are challenges, however.
Creators like YouTube because there's no gatekeeper. It gives them a lot of data, lets them own their content, and gives them a relatively generous 55% cut of the ad revenue.
Creator talent reps told BI some of their clients had walked away from potential Netflix deals because the streamer wouldn't budge from the Hollywood playbook, in which it owns ancillary rights to things like e-commerce revenue.
Scott Purdy, a media consultant at KPMG, said entertainment companies would likely start to look at YouTube and other social platforms as potential places to actually launch shows, starting with low-budget fare.
"For most companies, most options are on the table," he said.
Meanwhile, producers like Horrigan are blue-skying other creator-led formats to put on YouTube.
"Talent is still going to want to play in both sandboxes, but we're moving up the stack," he said. "What's next — is horror going to be a thing on YouTube, teen romance? I think that's going to be a thing as well."
