YouTube Says 220 British Creators Have Surpassed 1 Million Subscribers At UK Brandcast

YouTube hosted yesterday the UK edition of its annual Brandcast presentation — an exclusive showcase of the platform’s latest goings-on for an audiences of over 800 leading marketing execs. The event, hosted by late-night star and YouTube powerhouse James Corden, served as a means for YouTube to release some staggering stats, including the fact that 48% of all UK residents aged 16 to 34 say they watch YouTube on their TV screens.

YouTube also said that 18-to-34-year-olds in the UK watch on average 45 minutes of YouTube every day, citing comScore data, and that 73% of this watch time occurs on mobile devices. In the UK, more than 220 creators have surpassed 1 million subscribers (this figure is roughly 2,000 in the United States).

The West End musical-themed Brandcast show featured nearly two dozen local YouTubers onstage, including Colin Furze, Dan & Phil, Cupcake Jemma, TomSka, Tanya Burr, Caspar Lee, and Humza — with a special performance from Rick Astley, whose Never Gonna Give You Up helped popularize a bait-and-switch meme now known as Rickrolling.

“YouTube is home now to established stars like James expanding their reach, and to YouTube creators — born on the platform — rising up to shape popular culture,” said Matt Brittin

, Google’s president of EMEA business and operations. “Through their creativity, new formats, new genres, new stars and new trends emerge and flourish.”

Corden added that while the prospect of drumming up a sizable audience for his Late Late Show, which airs at 12:35 am, seemed like a tall order initially, he ultimately realized that “I didn’t have to make a show for any time slot because we had the Internet, and, more than that, we had YouTube.” Corden’s massively popular Carpool Karaoke video with Adele, for instance, was the most-watched viral video of 2016, according to YouTube.

Ronan Harris, the managing director of Google UK&I, also touted the platform’s technological achievements, noting that YouTube hosts the largest slate of VR content on the Internet. To this end, YouTube recently unveiled a standalone VR app. The company was also the first to support 360-degree livestreaming, according to Harris, and the first to offer streaming in 4K. “We also offer 8K and HDR and formats you probably haven’t even heard of, but will soon,” he said.