YouTube outlines new content deals

YouTube has announced new content deals with the CEO of the video sharing website vowing it will continue to grow responsibility.

YouTube

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says it's crucial the video sharing platform grows responsibly. (AAP)

YouTube now has 1.8 billion logged-in users each month and chief executive officer Susan Wojcicki says with that huge scale comes huge responsibility.

She made the comments at a YouTube advertising event on Thursday at New York City's Radio City Musical Hall, as the company announced several new content deals.

YouTube is renewing three of the seven ad-supported original shows it announced last year: Kevin Hart's "What the Fit?" comedy-fitness reality series, a show from Demi Lovato, and The Slow Mo Guys' "The Super Slow Show."

It has also renewed an exclusive livestreaming deal with the Coachella music festival for an additional three years, YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl announced.

Actor Will Smith will also bungee-jump from a helicopter over Grand Canyon for charity on September 25, which is also his birthday. Smith launched his YouTube channel in December, and already has 1.8 million subscribers, Kyncl said.

A deal has also been reached with the NBA to bring LeBron James' "Best Shot" docu-series about high school basketball players to the NBA's YouTube channel.

But the elephant in the room was Madison Avenue's concern about the brand safety of YouTube, which Wojcicki addressed briefly at the start of the event.

Over the past year, YouTube has been roiled by multiple scandals in which marketers discovered their ads running against hate speech and other objectionable content.

"It is critically important to me, and to everyone at YouTube, that we grow responsibly," she said. "There is not a playbook for how open platforms operate at our scale."

But Wojcicki offered no new details of YouTube's steps to fix the problem, other than rehashing steps already carried out.

Changes in the last few months include YouTube's commitment to manually review the ad-friendliness of every video included in Google Preferred, which comprises the top five per cent of the most-popular YouTube channels.


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Source: AAP



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