YouTube held its annual Made on YouTube event, where CEO Neal Mohan unveiled numerous new features as the platform shifts focus towards living room viewing on TV screens. The company has led all streaming platforms in overall view time for the past three years, with more than half of its top 100 creators receiving most of their views from television audiences. YouTube emphasised that it remains the epicenter of culture, highlighting successful theatrical releases from its creators and major events such as the World Cup, which drew 1.7 billion unique viewers.

Among the 3,000+ product updates launched this year, key announcements included Shorts series (allowing creators to organise content into seasons and episodes), live auto-dubbing starting in early 2027 (automatically translating speech in real time for international viewers), and expanded YouTube Shopping tags that drive more than twice as many clicks as traditional description links. The company is also scaling its creator monetisation efforts, with 1.3 million creators enrolled in its affiliate program, which has increased gross merchandise volume by 13 times over two years. YouTube plans to expand its affiliate programme to 35 countries by year's end and extend Amazon product tagging functionality from the US to India by the end of 2026.