In its recent announcement, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google had mentioned his company is going to take a full AI leap to continue its momentum in Cloud and YouTube video subscriptions. Last week, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan was selected as the new CEO, replacing Susan Wojcicki. In a latest development, YouTube was found to be testing a new functionality called “1080p Premium” on its platform. It is speculated to be a experimentation on “enhanced bitrate” for a better video viewing experience. To upgrade from the existing YouTube Premium model, subscribers could be asked to pay a fee to view videos in 1080p Premium.
It looks like YouTube is testing out a "high-bitrate" option for 1080p video.
This is smart as a lot of people simply use 4K for the better bitrate. Having a high bitrate at 1080p would address that desire without the increased cost from 4K. https://t.co/dqKCG7XEdk
— M. Brandon Lee | THIS IS TECH TODAY (@thisistechtoday) February 22, 2023
Currently, there are higher video viewing options available on YouTube. These are:
- 144p
- 360p
- 480p
- 720p60
- 1080p60 HD
- 1440p60 HD
- 2160p60 4K
In his tweet, M. Brandon Lee of THIS IS TECH TODAY wrote, “It looks like YouTube is testing out a “high-bitrate” option for 1080p video. This is smart as a lot of people simply use 4K for the better bitrate. Having a high bitrate at 1080p would address that desire without the increased cost from 4K.”
With the new se of viewing options on YouTube, monetization could be easier with its existing subscriber base as a majority of the users prefer to watch YouTube on latest 4K TVs and 4K-enabled smart devices. It could also mean brands could be snagged to feature videos with higher resolutions for better viewing experiences in 3D views using AR VR smartglasses.
Currently, YouTube Premium offers many standardized services such as ad-free watching, offline play mode and continuous play mode even when using other apps or in the background when your screen is locked or in airplane mode. Evidently, there are many benefits for YouTube Premium users, but will they be ready to shell out extra for better viewing experiences is something that needs to be strategically evaluated.
With more than 50 billion views per day, YouTube Shorts has already picked pace in the last 2 years, growing from 30 billion in 2021. Subscribers base on YouTube Music and YouTube Premium also registered healthy growth, notching 80 million registrations in a very short span. It is clear that YouTube would continue to focus heavily on growing its paid subscriber base across YouTube Shorts, YouTube TV, YouTube Kids and YouTube Primetime, something that would come with a fee-based model for better viewing experience on TV, mobile app and AR VR devices. We could also see a more rampant adoption of Google’s generative AI model like Bard, LaMDA and PaLM to improve video search functionalities with critical support across all of existing YouTube’s current offerings.
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