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YouTube’s Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl has made a bold claim about the future of digital video, saying that it will overtake TV to become “the largest way people spend their free time” before the year 2020.
With digital video on the rise and many pointing towards streaming services such as Netflix eventually surpassing traditional television viewing habits in popularity, Kyncl held a speech at CES 2016 last week in which he stated that he believed video would become more popular than TV within the next five years.
Robert Kyncl speaking at CES 2016. (Image Credit: Bryan Steffy / Getty Images)
“Digital video will overtake television to become the single largest way people spend their free time before the end of this decade,” he said, referring to the mobile viewing and even virtual reality as key contributors to this eventual shift.
According to Kyncl, the average person watches five hours of TV per day, compared to the one hour and thirty minutes they spend watching online videos. However, this number has increased by 60% year-upon-year, meaning that if it continues with a similar trajectory, it could well surpass TV by 2020.
The rise of digital video is also directly leading to the slow demise of cable, with many choosing to cancel their subscriptions with their providers in order to solely stream shows and movies online. While it’s more or less inevitable that digital video will overtake TV in the future, it remains to be seen whether it manages to do so within the time period given by Kyncl.
