Name: Susan Wojcicki Discusses Gender Bias and YouTube Red
Uploaded: 2015-12-03
Duration: 14 min 49 s
Description: The YouTube CEO sits down with Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram.

Okay, so we heard a little bit about your bio, most of your career, the vast majority of your career at Google has been on the ad side, and now you're running YouTube. So, we're gonna get to red of course, this is where it's going, and it's very nice that you wore red today. But, I want to know, the ad supported model is something that Google YouTube has always had. Still has. Still brings in the vast majority of revenue. Is that something that on the YouTube side is sustainable? Is it economically sustainable for YouTube? For the creators? That are on the platform. Yeah, well I think that there are many advantages to an ad supported model. And if you look at traditional media, like you look at Fortune as a magazine, or you look at cable, or you look at tc, it's ad supported and subscription supported. So if you look kind of across the industry, it's usually, often both of them play a significant role. Ads has many advantages, and I think one of them is that, from a societal standpoint, it enables everybody to have access to the content. And so people all over the globe can access this content, and it's paid for via advertising. And so I think we introduced a subscription model, earlier this year, But I think both of those, long term, are important to the platform. And ads is just a huge business that's continuing to grow. And will be, always, the majority. And will continue to grow. And I think if you look at how advertising is changing Traditionally it's gone to traditional media. But as media moves to being more digital, the advertising needs to move there too, and so advertisers need to figure out, well, what are the new ways that we connect with users? Users and they're looking at what's growing and where they can get scale, and YouTube definitely has scale so It's a great medium for advertisers. Yes, it does have scale. It's got over a billion users, almost 1 / 3 of all people on the internet so scale for sure. [ LAUGH ] So how many of you have heard of YouTube Red? Raise your hand. Okay, you need to educate the public here, so tell us what it is. Now you know why I joked about her wearing red, sorry. Red is also a YouTube color, and it's just nice on a cold winter day to wear red. So YouTube Red is a subscription service that we just rolled out, and it's a service that we thought would be really valuable for our users and our creators And what it has, is it is adds free for users. There also has background, which is the ability to listen to music and then on your phone be able to go and do other apps and also to have offline. So you can offline either music or videos or anything and then take them If your on an airplane or anywhere that there's not internet access. We also rolled out a music app soon afterwards and so in conjunction with RED and with the music app you can get a really great listening experience to be able to see the videos and then listen Set to the music. And so we just rolled this out. We actually have a 30 day trial. So you guys can all try it for free for 30 days. No ads. It's no ads. And it's $ 9. 99 a month. Okay. Why now? You've had YouTube since 2006, right? Mm- hm. So why now? Why are you doing the subscription, paid service today? You know, I think we've always thought about subscription models. So sort of having been at Google and seen this overevolution, I think we've always talked about it. But we've just been so busy with the ad models, and so many next things to do with the ad model. But I also think that YouTube in some ways is maturing, in the sense that we're seeing oh look, there's all this other great content. That we can enable and so a subscription models enables us to go and work with creators on new types of content, content that might cost more for us to be produced. And so as the internet is maturing it's an opportunity for us to be able to take that content and make it available to our users. So not just Swedish guys playing video games? Well, so speech, cuz that's a reference to PewDiePie who is our biggest. Biggest YouTube star, right? Who's a big YouTube star, and- Have any of you watched him? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ LAUGH ] Wrong demographic. [ LAUGH ] Apparently. You gotta see it, it's. [ LAUGH ] Yeah. So gaming is a really big category for us on YouTube. It's just the guy playing video games. On YouTube. I'll bet he's really funny. He is hilarious, yes. He's really funny, he's very talented. So that's an example of how media's really changed as a result of being digital. That wasn't a thing we have on tv, but something that we have on YouTube. And so we thought, as the Internet is maturing and there's more and more content, and more and more content looking for new places to go, it really makes sense for us to think about building a subscription service, and being able to capture some of that content, and make it available for users, or capture that opportunity. You've been going after cable TV for awhile, and you guys keep releasing comparisons At some point do you overtake it? Is it compatible? Is there enough sort of space in the world for both to coexist and do they compliment each other or not at all? I think if we look at TV and viewing usage the way I see it as that, there's a big shift that's happening and big shift the way we're consuming media. And so if you look at content online, I mean, you look at YouTube, it's got some features. So, first of all, it's global, so you can reach content from all over the globe. It's searchable, so you can find anything you want. It's diverse, it's got everything from the biggest stars to your friends neighbors child. And it's sharable and you can interact. And so if you look at those characteristics, you can say those are creating really compelling experiences and that's really changing how I consume media. So I think that is how we're going to consume it in the future and if you look at the traditional Content is not really set up to be able to make it searchable or have it be diverse or have it be global. Or have it be interactive in the way that it can be. But they're going this way and you're going that way. Right? There's some [ LAUGH ] We're converging in different ways but we come at it with different Perspectives, and I think the features to be able to interact and search and find it over time are gonna become really must haves for us. And I think if you look at the next generation who's really grown up. And for those of you who have teenagers, they're on it all the time. And if you ask them oh, would you like to watch this show? You can't search it, you can't find it, it's not global. You can't interact, you can't send it to your friend. They're like oh well what do you do with it. [ LAUGH ] Oh you watch it. Right you almost have to explain it to them that this is how you interact with it. And so I think our consumers are becoming more demanding where they're expecting more and more from their video experiences and that's what I think the future's gonna look like. Okay. I wanna get to your questions in a minute, but I'm going to switch gears. For those of you who don't follow the glamorous world of technology conferences religiously, there was a bit of a kerfuffle earlier this year. We had you at our tech conference over the summer. You spoke at another Technology companies tech conference just a month or two ago, I guess, and you were asked about your children. You have five children. You talk about them. You've written op- eds on the subject, parental even and such. And I know it's funny, I'm asking you how you feel about being asked about children by asking you about children. But there was a lot of controversy that sort of erupted from some of the questions that you were asked, including at our own conference, that why are we putting a woman on stage at a business or technology conference and asking her about her children? Would a man be asked the same questions? Do you think that there's a reason for the controversy and if so what is it? And were you offended? Well, I think, I definitely thought about it a lot and I think in our. I have to look at it and say the fact that I'm a woman CEO and I have five children it's unusual and so people have questions about it and. I think particularly other women want to understand, like oh well how did you do that? And how do you make your life work? On the other hand when I'm at a business conference talking about business and all of my peers are talking only about business I think it's important that. We're treated in the same way. And so when it's a business event about business it should be just about business. On the other hand, yeah I'm glad there's some supporters there. Because it's also very strange if You know there's some other CEO there. Let's say I have a competitor and the competitor's there and he's a man and they're just talking about business. And then I'm talking about my kids and then maybe about my business too. It creates a funny dynamic and so I think business events need to be really about business. On the other hand I think there is a time and a place for people to say I wanna talk about work life balance, or we wanna talk about how you handle things and I've tried to be very open because I wanna share my experiences with other women and I want them to understand how I see it but I wanna just make sure that it's a forum where we've agreed that's what we're gonna talk about beforehand. [ INAUDIBLE ] The other thing I guess I would say is women get asked a lot more about work life balance and they get asked a lot more like oh how do you do that? Right. They don't ask men how do you do that. How are you CEO and have kids? They don't ask that to them. [ LAUGH ] And I think implicit in the question to a women of well how do you do that? Is well it's your job to be at home and to be taking care of kids. And you obviously aren't doing that right now because you're at work doing something else so who is doing like what we thought was your job? And that's what sort of implicit in the question and so that's why that question either needs to be For men and women, of like, well how do you handle work life balance, or or we need to just keep it all business. Okay. Question from the audience. Do not ask, how do you do, at all. [ LAUGH ] Or you can, or you can. Raise your hand, if you have a question. Back there. [ INAUDIBLE ] You have a microphone. Hi Leena. Hi. I'm Leena Rao from Fortune. What's your all- time favorite YouTube video. [ LAUGH ] Oh gosh. There's so many YouTube videos. Do not say Gangham style. [ LAUGH ] Is that it? No. [ LAUGH ] I mean Gangham style is a really significant one because we have so many. I mean there was one video that I saw that in the very early days that caused me want to buy YouTube. and that definitely changed my outcome and the company's outcome and YouTube's outcome. It was a lip syncing video of the Backstreet Boys, of these kids in China, and their roommate is in the background Doing homework and it is still such a funny video. Every single time I see it, I laugh. And that was really the video that made me realize, wow. People all over the world can create content. They don't need to be always in a studio to create something compelling. And it's what made me, the lights went off in my head when I saw that, so I have to say that's my favorite video. I, I have one last quick question for you. Yes. Like I said, we had Anne, your sister on stage yesterday and she's the founder and CEO of 23 [ UNKNOWN ]. You're running YouTube. The third sister, the slacker, is a doctor, right? [ LAUGH ] So, and, and, and you know I think one of the remarkable things is not only the financial successes there, the business success but it seems like The three of you have followed what you're passionate about. And I'm just wondering, for those of us who have daughters, is there something your mom or your dad said, or did that kind of helped set that course that we can emulate? Yeah, that's a great question. I think my parents definitely, I sort of looked. I grew up on the Stanford campus, and so my dad was an academic. And so I definitely got the encouragement from my family to do well in school, which I think always helps anyone and everybody. In their career but the other thing that happened that I think was unique in our experiences is that because we grew up on a college campus we were really encouraged to do something that was meaningful to us. I think my parents were not so traditional that they said oh, you need to go and join the current hot company, right? Oh, you have to become Because if you become a doctor, we all need doctors, but you have a very specific path that you can do. We took very untraditional paths, where in our 20s , we were traveling all over and trying different things and But yet then we both found something that was a little bit different. When I joined Google, nobody thought that the world needed another search engine. But I thought, oh, like they're really changing how people find information. That could be really meaningful. And so that was what inspired me to do it. And I think for my sister, too, looking And thinking, well how could genetics be different? How could we help people? Again it was something that, it wasn't on the traditional path, and so I think our parents encouraged us to do well, but they also just encouraged us to find meaning in our lives and do something that we thought would be significant for us and some way of giving back to the world. Thank you so much on that note. Thank you, it's so good to be here. Lovely having you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Susan Wojcicki Discusses Gender Bias and YouTube Red

The YouTube CEO sits down with Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram.