Editor’s note: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan attended the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where he gave a keynote address, alongside top creators Amelia Dimoldenberg, Alex Cooper, and Brandon Baum. Here’s a transcript of his talk, which has been edited for clarity.
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Good morning everyone!
It’s wonderful to be here in Cannes, celebrating the latest in storytelling and innovation. I can’t think of a better place to celebrate YouTube’s 20th birthday.
It all started with a 19-second video: “Me at the Zoo.” Then, pioneers like iJustine, Smosh, and Philip DeFranco began uploading, cementing “creator” as a dream job for millions of people around the world.
Video by video, creator by creator, YouTube has become a driving force in culture. A place where trends are born, movements are sparked, and creativity is constantly redefined. Anyone with an idea, whether an individual, an artist, a studio, or a brand, can become a creator here.
Today, YouTube is THE epicenter of culture. I don’t mean fads or overnight successes that go unnoticed. I mean culture with a capital “C.” The place where, day after day, year after year, the events, conversations, and voices that define the moment emerge and make their mark.
But today isn’t just about celebrating the last 20 years, it’s about expressing our vision for the next 20 and explaining why I believe the next revolution in creativity and brand building will happen on YouTube.
On YouTube, creators have fascinated us from the very beginning. In the early days, they uploaded grainy, unscripted videos from their bedrooms. They’ve honed their craft, built communities, and given rise to a new creative class.
Today’s creators are Hollywood startups
Like most startups, these creators are reinventing the industries that inspired them and creating new jobs for writers, editors, actors, and producers. Some are even building cutting-edge production studios.
Take Inoxtag, a creator in France who wanted the world to see him climb Mount Everest. He assembled a full crew: writers, graphic designers, and a lead director.
Last year, his debut documentary, Kaizen , premiered in theaters across the country and on YouTube, where it garnered 17 million views in less than 48 hours.
Now these creators are coming to the big screen at home: the television. Viewers now watch over a billion hours of YouTube on their TVs every day… And for over half of the world’s top 100 YouTube channels, the TV is the most watched screen.
With this audience in mind, creators are serializing their shows and releasing them in HD, like The Broski Report, a weekly show that celebrates pop culture.
Creators are experimenting with new TV… And it’s nothing like the old one.
When viewers tune in, they want to watch what matters to them, unconstrained by format, genre or style.
They want to experience the Eurovision Song Contest grand final and then watch their favorite artists perform again. They want to live stream the Cannes Film Festival, including creators’ reactions on the red carpet and Palme d’Or predictions. They want to watch highlights of the U.S.-France Olympic basketball game, followed by a two-hour podcast analyzing NBA legends.
And let’s talk about podcasts, one of the most relevant formats influencing culture today. On YouTube alone, one billion viewers watch podcasts every month.
Rotten Mango, hosted by creator Stephanie Soo, has gained over 2 million new subscribers in just a year since it began integrating videos. It now tops our weekly podcast charts on YouTube.
Creators clearly have enormous cultural power… Backed by the relationships they build with their communities of passionate fans. These fandoms don’t just follow culture, they shape it.
And instead of just watching a video, fans have put their own spin on it. Last fall, Glitch launched the animated dark comedy series The Amazing Digital Circus. The pilot episode alone has racked up more than 300 million views. But the fan response has gone even more viral. The songs, memes, and spin-off content created around the series have collectively generated 25 billion views.
Fandom itself is becoming a form of creative expression: from reaction videos to fan art and more. And one of the easiest ways to get in on the action is through short-form videos.
On YouTube, we’re seeing a huge increase in the number of people creating and watching Shorts.
Today I’m happy to share a new milestone: YouTube Shorts now averages over 200 billion daily views!
One last key point about these fan communities: they don’t just exist online. Fandoms that start on YouTube fuel culture in the real world.
In 2013, a group of creators came together over a shared passion for gaming, calling themselves Sidemen. Today, they are one of the largest collectives on YouTube, with over 150 million subscribers across their channels.
They’ve created their own merchandising lines, opened a brick-and-mortar store, founded a fast food chain, and more. Every year they compete against other creators in the Sidemen Charity Match. This year, they sold out Wembley Stadium, just like Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and BTS.
This explosion of creativity—from fan-generated content to real-world moments—proves that fandom is no longer just a matter of consumption; it’s a powerful force that drives culture.
Now there’s another important way creators are showing us what the future will look like: artificial intelligence.
Like startups, creators are among the earliest adopters and fastest movers when it comes to cutting-edge technologies.
I am incredibly excited about the potential of AI tools to enhance human creativity.
We’re already seeing it on YouTube. Veo is Google DeepMind’s video generation model that lets you create AI-generated backgrounds and video clips for Shorts. We’ve put this model in the hands of creators with Dream Screen. Last month, Google announced its latest model: Veo 3, which dramatically improves video quality and integrates audio.
Today I’m proud to announce that Veo 3 is coming to YouTube Shorts in the coming months.
I think these tools will open up new creative avenues for everyone to explore. But what’s even more exciting than what you see on the screen is how AI is helping creatives behind the scenes.
Language, for example, is one of the biggest obstacles to growing a global audience. Our automatic dubbing feature already translates videos into 9 different languages, with 11 more on the way, and significantly increases the potential audience a creator or brand can reach.
In the six months since creators started using this feature, we’ve already dubbed more than 20 million videos using AI.
The possibilities of AI are endless.
A lot can change in a generation. Entertainment itself has changed more in the last two decades than at any other time in history. Creators have led this revolution .
My bet for the next 20 years? Creators will flip formats, blend genres, and push deeper into the mainstream as brand ambassadors, corporations, and visionary storytellers. Communities will continue to amaze us with the power of their collective fandom. And cutting-edge AI technology will push the limits of human creativity.
My biggest bet is that YouTube will continue to be the stage where everything happens. Where anyone with a story to share can turn their dream into a career… And anyone with a voice can bring people together and change the world.
Thank you for sharing this journey with us.