Lantern: A new measurement solution for TV

📺 📲 Ep. 2: A guy with a scarf asks a question to... Paola Marinone For this episode, I asked Paola — co-founder of BuzzMyVideos, ex-YouTube and Google, and one of the sharpest minds I know on this space — to untangle the big question behind the headlines. ❓ Q: I’ve seen a lot of articles about YouTube dominating big-screen TV. But if we go one level deeper, are we talking about YouTube or YouTube TV? Which regions, and what are people really watching there? Her take was clear: ➡️ We’re really looking at YouTube as a whole on TV devices, not YouTube TV (which is closer to cable). ➡️ Most of the data we all cite comes from the US (Nielsen) and the UK (Barb), but the trends are global. ➡️ The story is about pace: streaming on TV devices is up +13% YoY, while cable/broadcast is down -13%. ➡️ Within streamers, YouTube is #1 with +23% growth YoY, Netflix #2 at +10%. ➡️ The experience on the big screen is “not perfect” — discoverability and UX need work — but momentum is undeniable. ➡️ What happens in the US tends to cascade to Europe and beyond, so this is one to watch closely. This new format is simple: one question, one answer, under three (ehm this time much more!) minutes. And Paola nailed it. 👉 Watch the full exchange here A guy with a scarf #youtube #analytics

TV IS DEAD... LONG LIVE TV? 📺 YouTube now owns 13.1% of all TV viewing time in the US. That's more than Disney, Netflix, or any traditional broadcaster. Here's why this matters more than it might seem: TV has traditionally been the leading brand building medium because of three things. A big screen with the sound on, entertainment, and crucially, shared viewing. You're not watching alone on your phone. You're on the sofa, usually with other people, seeing the same thing at the same time. That communal experience is what makes TV brilliant for building brands at scale. Collective understanding. That environment? It now increasingly belongs to YouTube. Creators who built their audiences on phones are now on the main screen in the living room. They're bringing their communities, their trust, and their influence with them. So you get the authenticity and connection of creator content, delivered in the format that's always driven brand fame. Two things worth considering: 1. If your brand strategy is still built around traditional TV dynamics, you might be optimising for a living room that's already moved on. 2. And if your YouTube or creator strategy is built around the small screen, you're literally missing the big picture.

YouTube Is the New TV — And Most People Haven’t Realized It Yet Let’s be honest. Traditional TV is dying — and YouTube quietly took its place. In May 2025, YouTube grabbed 12.5% of all TV viewing time in the U.S., more than any streaming platform. Cable and broadcast are down double digits, and the fastest-growing group watching YouTube on TV screens? People over 50. YouTube isn’t just “videos on your phone” anymore — it’s in the living room, on the biggest screen in the house. And that changes everything. Why It’s Replacing TV 1. Device shift: People are watching YouTube on smart TVs more than ever. 2. Longer content: Over 70% of watch time now comes from long-form videos. 3. Better experience: On-demand, personalized, and algorithm-driven beats scheduled programming. 4. Older audiences joined in: The 50+ demographic is growing fastest — they’ve swapped cable for YouTube. What It Means for You • Creators: Stop optimizing only for mobile. Think big screen — better sound, cleaner visuals, longer storytelling. • Brands: YouTube ads are now 3× more effective than TV spots. It’s cheaper, measurable, and global. • Viewers: You control the remote now — not some network executive. YouTube didn’t “kill” TV. It became TV.

Jimmy Kimmel's opening monologue has been watched more than 9.3 million times on YouTube after just 10 hours. That number will surely climb. While linear ratings aren't immediately available, I expect a spike in viewership, though it might be more muted with 23% of households cut off from the broadcast: CNN reported a 10,000% increase in searches for "what time is Jimmy Kimmel on?" For context, Jimmy Kimmel averaged 1.77 million viewers in Q2 2025, per Nielsen. So many takeaways here, including the importance of social media as a distribution and marketing vehicle for TV. But my big takeaway is that our media consumption behaviors are more fluid and fragmented than many people think. YouTube and TikTok are challenging traditional TV distributors and redefining the way we watch television. But I suspect many people will also tune into linear TV at broadcast time when there's something they want to watch, especially if it's culturally relevant. More of my comments on Bloomberg Television yesterday. Thank you for having me!

The decline of traditional television in the USA isn’t sudden — it has been unfolding for more than 30 years, accelerating sharply in the past decade. Once dominated by the “Big Three” networks, broadcast and cable TV have steadily lost ground to streaming, mobile, and on-demand platforms. Why? Technology changed how we watch, advertising dollars followed the audience, and viewers demanded more control, diversity, and authenticity. Traditional TV schedules no longer fit modern lifestyles. Cord-cutting, binge-watching, and streaming subscriptions proved people want content on their terms. But there’s another factor: "BIAS". Network agendas, whether political, commercial, or cultural, have become more obvious as people can instantly compare coverage across multiple platforms. When viewers lose trust, they turn elsewhere. The perception of selective storytelling has accelerated the shift. This is not just an American story. The USA often sets the tone for global media. As traditional TV declines there, ripple effects are felt in Australia, the UK, Asia, and beyond. Local broadcasters face the same challenge: competing with international streamers, shrinking ad revenue, and rising audience expectations. The truth is that traditional TV isn’t “dying” overnight — it’s transforming. Some networks will adapt by embracing hybrid models, local storytelling, and transparency. Others may fade. But the lesson is clear: audiences align with platforms that match their frequency of trust, convenience, and authenticity. The demise of traditional TV shows us how quickly industries can be reshaped when technology, trust, and culture collide. The real question is: how will legacy networks, and the countries influenced by them, respond? #TraditionalTV #StreamingEra #CordCutting #MediaBias #BroadcastDecline #FutureOfTV #DigitalTransformation #StreamingPlatforms #GlobalMedia #AudienceTrust #MediaEvolution #ContentShift Credit: TVLine

🎬 TV Is Dead. Long Live TV. YouTube Just Ate Television—and It’s Still Hungry. For six straight months, YouTube has been the #1 TV distributor in America, according to Nielsen. That means more people now watch YouTube on their TV screens than on phones or laptops — a shift that redefines what “television” even means. (The Hollywood Reporter, 2025) But this isn’t just about viewership. It’s about the rewiring of attention economics: 📺 Prime time is no longer scheduled — it’s personalized. 🎯 The “channel” is now your recommendation feed. 🧠 Algorithms, not executives, decide what trends next. 🔄 What This Means for the Industry 1️⃣ #Algorithms are the new #broadcasters. Creators and studios alike compete for placement, not airtime. YouTube’s algorithmic reach now drives cultural conversations the way NBC or CNN once did. 2️⃣ The niche is the new #mainstream. A micro-documentary about coral reefs can trend beside a MrBeast stunt. Audiences don’t see categories; they see curiosity, identity, and affinity. 3️⃣ Traditional “air time” is obsolete. Linear programming can’t compete with an algorithm that personalizes for billions in real time. 4️⃣ Brands and networks must unlearn TV logic. The smartest strategies now optimize for retention, recommendation, and resonance — not ratings. ⚡ The Big Shift In 2025, #YouTube isn’t replacing TV — it is TV. Only it’s smarter, faster, and far more democratic. As Neal Mohan, YouTube’s CEO, recently said: “Consumers are actually voting with their watch time, with their engagement.” (The Ankler, 2025) And that’s the future of media right there — the power has shifted to where people spend their time, not where broadcasters schedule it. So the question isn’t whether digital will overtake TV. It already has. The question is: 👉 Are you programming for the algorithmic age, or still scheduling for the broadcast one?

YouTube, Before it was Cool! Before #YouTube became the belle of #MIPCOM’s ball, I was working, hard, to convince Mainstream Media to employ social video as their next generation of Broadcast - because it’s virtually the ONLY way to reach 100% of the audience they want. Two early adapters: Paul McGrath & CBC. The CBC case study is one of many that I shared during my MIPCOM masterclass - because it’s best for debunking the TV “cannibalization myth.” EVERY TIME we hold workshops on this topic with senior TV teams, head-in-the-sand holdouts of “YOUTUBE IS NOT TV MUH!” steadfastly claim that social video “steals audiences” from TV and Streaming. When I ask them for the data to support their claim, the reply is simply “well, it’s obvious.” Sure. Except that ALL the actual data and EVERY SINGLE case study proves the EXACT opposite. In fact each case study we’ve offered demonstrates that IP from the biggest publishers finds entirely new audiences and wholly additive revenues on social video - that mainstream studios who play by Creator rules, RULE as Creators. Which proves ESHAP’s axiom of Television Transformation: The biggest obstacle of progress in traditional Media is the Fear of Finding Out. You can see the CBC case study (including the data) and all our current case studies, PLUS a big chunk of my MIPCOM presentation - at the adorable little link in my bio above ⬆️ .

Cannibalization is still the #1 question I get a conferences. The concern is valid, sure, but it’s also symptomatic of a larger problem. We (the media industry) desperately need to reset how we think about content and audiences. Let me explain. If you are concerned about cannabilization it is likely because you are looking at media consumption from the perspective of content, or a show. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s natural, but it does lead to some false assumptions, like the assumption that content distribution is a zero-sum game and if I publish a show on one platform it will take away from another platform. Thinking this way, from the perspective of content, belies a failure to understand how the user experience of consuming entertainment actually works. If you look at it from a user experience POV, you’ll notice a different pattern. The audience is not generally following content from platform to platform, their starting point is not to think of a show and to then try to determine which platform the show is on, their starting point is usually totally different. It’s usually “I’m bored and I want to be entertained.” They are not usually thinking of shows first. They are thinking about themselves first: “I’m bored.” Then their next question becomes “how can I be entertained?” Based on research from Digital i, we know that the audience usually relies on 2 or 3 main platforms for entertainment. Usually one or two of YouTube, Netflix, Disney or Prime. The audience uses those platforms repeatedly, habitually and for the bulk of their consumption, and the more effectively the platform delivers on their user needs (“entertain me”), the more the platform forms habits with the audience that leads to loyalty. Being able to solve discoverability more effectively than other platforms is a key part of reducing friction and fulfilling the user need for entertainment. So everyone is now looking at YouTube and saying it’s a Trojan horse, it’s gonna cannabilize TV, but IMO that’s not really what’s driving growth on YouTube. My hypothesis is this: YouTube is winning the entertainment game because they have more data points on their users than anybody else. Netflix knows what you like to watch on Netflix, YouTube has access to what you do on Gmail, what shorts you watched earlier, Google maps, what you search for, what web sites you visit etc etc. They have more data to solve discoverability than anyone else, and they have 20 years of experience developing personalization algorithms to serve you the most relevant content on the right device at the right moment. That’s why YouTube is winning. The whole conversation about cannabilization seems to miss this point. YouTube is not winning because it’s attracting more TV content, it’s winning because it understands how to fulfill a user need better than its competitors. Rant over. Thanks for the shout out Evan Shapīro and great seeing you in Cannes.

Different continents, different TV, not everyone wants the same I met Evan Shapīro last month in Amsterdam, and we shared insights about the future of TV and what we would like to change in our industry if we could. We were also sharing a table with other industry leaders and discussing the US market, as well as GENX, Y, and Z, and the fact that they are using YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to get news, rather than traditional TV. Suddenly, a colleague of ours shared that he had a major migration project in Germany to a new technology; while the main complaint was, 'Get ready…' “ We don't have Teletext anymore.” Teletext !!! Old people want Teletext; they like their RCU with big numbers to access their favorite channels. The following made all of us think and agree on the following: 1. TV customers in different countries have different needs 2. Europe has a much older population compared to others, and Europe is split into many countries with different languages and cultures, which also need attention. In my opinion, Addressable TV in Europe will be much more challenging to make a profit because the continent is divided into many small countries speaking different languages, which makes targeting even more complex. Let's see, Netflix and Amazon will handle that.

📺 The future of TV is digital, and it’s already here. Our UK Commercial Director, Juliet McCutcheon, was featured in The Drum’s latest IAB UK Open Mic article, “TV+: Power, Precision, and the Future of Advertising.” As digitally enabled TV (TV+) continues to blur the lines between linear and digital, Juliet highlights how YouTube’s dominance on the big screen is redefining what “TV” means today, and why brands need granular, contextual insight at the video level to ensure campaigns reach audiences where it matters most. TV+ is changing the definition of television. The question is: are advertisers ready for it? Read the full article for more insights: https://lnkd.in/gYhKxa_5. #YouTube #CTV #AdTech #DigitalAdvertising #ContextualTargeting #TheDrum