How would you increase YouTube's daily active users?

 

1. Revenue is mostly via ads. It is now entering subscription based services as well but that is relatively new. (Subscription provides - background play, download videos & adfree content)
2. Threat from other video subscription apps in long run like Prime & Netflix.  Also from Facebook which has entered user content generated videos via Watch.

1. Add new offering like Podcasts. Youtube already has a music app. It should add podcast as a functionality as this aligns with its mission statement of giving voice to users and show them the world. 
2. Focus on premium content creation via partnership with production houses and own content creation so that new users who like to see premium documentaries, movies, wed series can also use Youtube. 
3. Adding features in existing youtube app like allowing comments to be in form of videos /images instead of only text to increase to and fro threads and thus increasing engagement & adding a category based catalog of videos so that customers can easily search for videos at leisure.

 

Step 1: Ask clarifying questions

1) What do you mean by Daily active users? Are these users who are consuming/creating content on youtube on a daily basis or are these just users who login to youtube on a daily basis, which one we considering? (We will go with people who actively use youtube on a daily basis)

2) Is there a particular reason why Youtube is trying to increase it's daily active users any particular user  segment or geographic that its target or is that something that you'd like me to assume?

 (For this case we will be considering millenial users since they have the maximum usage and engagement on the platform).

3) What is the company's current status?

Step 2:  Explain your understanding of the product

Youtube is an online video creation and sharing platform acquired by Google. The mission of youtube is to connect people across the world and bring them closer with the help of videos

Strengths of youtube is high stickiness amongst users, huge amount of content that caters to different types of audience. Huge network of content creators, celebrities, sports stars, businesses who use this platform on a regular basis

Weakness of youtube is it's a heavy reliance on ads for revenue. Youtube is a platform which is dependant on content creators for content, very few and less youtube original content.

The main target users of youtube are:

By demographic

Millenials (18-30)

Middle aged (31-55)

Senior  citizens (55+)

By user type

1) Content creators- They can further be divided into individuals, businesses, brands, social media influencers, celebrities who create content on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

2) Content consumers- These are generally businesses, brands, individuals, influencers that consume content on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

For the scope of this problem we will be going with content consumers, i.e people who consume content on youtube (by watching videos)

Problems faced by millenials are as follows

1) Too many pre and post video ads leads to a bad user experience from the user's perspective

2) Too much scrolling needs to be done to reach/check out relevant content of one's choice which is very time consuming and can cause some irritation to the end user.

3) Lack of original content from youtube, unlike netflix and other OTT services. Premium content and movies are very less in number and are paid

4) Lack of social connect, users don't know what kind of content/videos their friends are watching, which gives a feeling of being in-silo and isolation

5) Lack of in-person experience- Watching and consuming content on video doesn't give the in-person experience of people gathering together and watching videos together.

6) Difficult to keep a track of the new videos that are out, that are of the person's interest.

 

Step 3: List down your solutions  (For every solution discuss tradeoffs as well)

1) Any new videos that are released and is of the person's interest in a way that the person has subscribed to the channel. These new release video notification should be sent to the end consumers in the form of an email, text message or a push notification

An average person has subscribed to a lot of youtube channels, so there might be instances when a lot of youtube channels have released a video on a particular day, thus a lot of emails and messages might overwhelm the end users and can lead to a negative user experience

2) Launching an in-person experience feature wherein people can watch videos together and can also chat on the youtube platform as well thus giving the in-person feeling of consuming content on youtube.

There can be issues related to network/bandwidth, how many users can watch videos at once. There can be a lag and delay as well which can cause a negative experience.

3) Launching a friends/network feature wherein people can see the kind of videos their friends are watching, this is a very important feature as this can lead to discovering of new content and later engaging with the content.

If your gmail contacts are not synced or if you don't have many contacts on gmail (because of change in email) you would see no difference and it would feel like how youtube felt before this feature

4) Curating more premium youtube originals content for free, as for millenials money might be an issue as they don't/won't have an income source

Premium content is free but not of interest to the end user that problem can arise as well.

 

Step 4: Listing down your evaluation criteria

The main mission of youtube is to connect peple across the world with the help of videos.

Some of the evaluation criterias that i have come with is Provide amazing user experience to people, Impact to end user, Opportunity size for that particular solution/feature, Implementation effort required, Alignment and closeness to mission, Engagement etc

 

Step 5: Evaluating your solutions against every evaluation criteria

Solutions

1) End user should be notified about a new video release with the help of an sms, email message and a push-based notification as well.

In terms of impact to end users- It will have a high impact on the end users as they would be able to discover recommended and the content of their choice more easily, which will further lead to an increase in user engagement.

In terms of implementation effort-Not a lot of effort will be required to implement this feature.

Opportunity Size- The opportunity size for this solution/feature is huge and can be scaled easily. Will benefit a lot of users.

Aligned to the company's goal and mission as well. Not that much of a UX change as well

 

2) Launching an in-experience person feature like netflix party where in people can watch youtube videos together either with 1 person or with an entire group and chat as well.

This feature is aligned to company's goal and mission. Will be a medium to high level of UX change for youtube

Opportunitity size- The opportunity size is huge as well and can be scaled easily too, will definitely be beneficial on a large scale.

In terms of implementation effort- Quite some amount of engineering effort will be required along with a lot of testing to get this feature out.

Definitely will lead to more user engagement on youtube and this new feature can also increase the number of DAU in times like these when people are working from home during this pandemic, it's more viable and effective

High impact on end user

 

3) Launching a feature/friends network feature wherein after connecting with all your friends/network through various different social media channels. Users can see what kind of music their friends are listening to and can discover new music which can further lead to increase in engagement on the platform. Will also give a sense of FOMO to people who are not consuming content on youtube and might give them an incentive after knowing that their friends are watching(have watched) a particular video content

This feature has a huge opportunity size and a high impact on end user

Medium to high amount of implementation effort will be required

Quite a lot of change in UX will happen with the implementation of this feature

Implementation effort- A lot of implementation effort will be required to get this feature out

 

4) Curating more youtube original content for free for millenials

This will have a low to medium impact on end user.

UX change will be very less

Effort required me less as well

Oppotunity size is there, it's medium to high. Not a lot of implemenation effort will be required to roll out this feature

 

Based on all the above solutions, i would go with launching a new friends feature wherein people can see the kind of music /videos their friends are watching and listening to, this will help, users stay connected with their friends, know about the kind of content their friends watch, discover new content and thus increase engagement as well also its highly aligned to the mission and the goal of the company.

For the MVP release of this feature will just allow users to add/connect with their friends through gmail however we will be contionously iterating and A/B testing the feature and keep rolling out this feature and incremental versions of this feature to diffent geographical markets.

 

Scope:

We need to increase YouTube's DAU.

Daily Active User means, users who open YouTube (not measuring engagement or adoption here)? Answer: Right!

 

User groups:

There are two primary user groups

1. Content Consumers (splitting them further by demography)
   1. Millennials (18-30 yrs)
   2. Middle aged (31-55)
   3. Old (55+)

 

2. Content Producers

 

Since Millennials are hooked to online medium, the penetration in that group is higher and they would be active on digital medium most of the time, including YouTube.

For the purpose of this, we'll talk middle aged group (1b) and see how can we tap this user base

 

Use Cases:

Let's define the User group in a little more detail here.

 

• Middle aged user group comprises of people who are working/running their own business etc. basically people who are busy and don’t have a lot of time to spare
• Most of them are married and have kids
• Have house on mortgage, some have investments in bank deposits, mutual funds, Equities etc.

 

 

 

User needs:

• These users are busy and would like to be updated on the news and latest happenings
• User would like to be updated about the investment portfolio without logging in anywhere, with some voice summary
• User would like to be provided with learning videos to keep updated on work or interest related technology/any area
• User would like to keep entertained with music/videos

 

Amongst all the other needs, we'll focus on the above

 

Solution:

 

Amongst the above different solutions, #1, 3 and 4 can be pursued.

Investment made in addressing #1 can then be extended to multiple other fields/sectors like health/medicine and potentially hook more users thereby increasing DAU

 

We can roll out #3 initially as it has medium effort and can measure the DAU due to that feature of the users who used YouTube for that feature to measure the success of the same.

For #1, YouTube can integrate with one of the financial brokers to build the integration and user can then use it after their consent. If the usage is good, we can then see the signups of the users not on YouTube to that service

 

 

Here's my thoughts on approaching this Google product strategy question...

Goal: Increase Daily Active User Count (DAU) for YT

Success metric: DAU

Current User Base: Content creators and consumers. Choosing to focus on consumers.

Consumer user segment: Millenials, Teenagers, Older Population.

I would like to focus on the millenial population cause they have a high propensity of adoption due to their digital savvy nature. In order to improve the usage of YT I want to think about the key problems for this user segment and try and solve some of those problems with the idea of lifting DAU count.

Problems faced by Millenials:

1. Lack of close social signals - Don't know what my friends, contacts are watching on YT. Social signals can be a strong reason to discover new content and watch it.

2. Lack of personalized experiences - I can't experience watching content with my contacts like I was with them in a real-world like watching TV with friends around me.

3. Hard design - Too much scrolling to discover relevant content

4. Lack of YT specific content - Might find the same video on Dailymotion, FB videos, Twitter etc. No premium content like Netflix or lack of new content being published.

5. Too many pre roll and mid roll ads.

In order to lift DAU, I want to focus on solving #1. The framework I am using to evaluate which problem to focus on by measuring every initiative along the dimensions of: 1. Impact on user experience, 2. Engineering Cost, 3. Impact on revenue, 4. Confidence in being able to deliver value.

Problem #1 - If we can solve this problem and allow users to discover content their friends are watching, it can potentially have a meaningful impact on user curiosity and thus lift user engagement. Below are some potential feature work that can be done to measure the impact.

1. Sync FB contacts to discover content seen by friends

2. Digest emails and push notification recommending a collection of trending social videos

3. Trending video recommendation

Between the above 3 ideas, I would focus on picking #3 as a way to test out my hypothesis using social signals. I can build an MVP with the least amount of engineering effort. I can choose specific geography like bay area and understand what are the trending topics in that region and send bay area users emails and push notifications to see if we see an above-average engagement for email and pushes. If we see a stat sig lift then we can confirm our hypothesis and build a sophisticated product to test out this idea.

We can measure the lift in DAU for our MVP experiment and as we build the engineering platform to support it we can test it out with better A/B tests and implement in other initiatives like syncing FB contacts, digest emails/push with socially viewed content.