NATPE Budapest opened its 2025 edition with a keynote speech by YouTube‘s Andreas Briese. In his presentation, Briese presented a concrete roadmap for creators and media companies in Central and Eastern Europe to make the most of the YouTube ecosystem, with a focus on audience growth and monetization.
Briese noted that YouTube has evolved into a “multiformula, multi-device, multi-revenue stream” platform. In the last three years, he said, ‘YouTube’s partner programme has distributed $70 billion to musicians, broadcasters, producers and other players’. This scale, he said, is unprecedented in the industry.
The concept of a “multi-formula platform” was central to his presentation. It involves offering different formats (short films, podcasts, lives, VOD) within the same ecosystem, to generate deeper and more connected consumption routes. ‘We turn a casual viewer watching a short film on mobile into an engaged fan watching a live stream on their smart TV’ he explained.
YouTube is now the most consumed service on connected TVs in the US, behind Netflix. In this environment, content longer than 20 minutes now accounts for 50% of viewing time on the big screen.
In terms of monetization, Briese stressed that the advertising model remains the core, but that there are now multiple additional sources: subscriptions (such as YouTube Premium, with 125 million subscribers), product sales, exclusive memberships and hybrid promotional content + distribution models.
The executive also urged producers and broadcasters to build themed or branded channels, and to experiment with exclusive content, compilations, behind-the-scenes or extended versions. As an example, he cited House of the Dragon, which deployed a 360 strategy with short films, clips, podcasts and long-form content to amplify engagement.
Finally, he emphasized that YouTube not only distributes content, but also acts as a marketing channel: ‘In Spain, 12% of traffic to RTVE’s digital platforms came from YouTube; in Italy, it generated 90% of Sky’s new subscribers’.
