YouTube's CES Keynote: 4 Reasons Why Digital Video Will Win the Decade

Robert Kyncl, the Chief Business Officer at YouTube, gave a keynote speech at CES 2016 (link is external) yesterday. Video marketers will want to make the time to watch all 57 minutes and 36 seconds of “Robert Kyncl, YouTube - Keynote 2016,” which was uploaded to the CES channel (link is external) today.

Now, I realize that urging you to carve almost an hour out of your busy schedule seems like I’m asking you to make an enormous investment of time. But, trust me, Kyncl delivers the kind of strategic insights, critical data, tactical advice, and latest trends in the digital video marketing business that will give you a colossal return on that investment.

After watching the video above, I asked Michelle Slavich, the head of Entertainment Communications at YouTube, for a transcript of Kyncl’s keynote. You will find it below. Now, I haven’t made that kind of request since I managed to get a copy of John Green’s keynote address (link is external) at VidCon 2015. So, I thought Kyncil’s keynote contains insightful analysis and interesting information that is beyond obvious.

Nevertheless, after watching Kyncl’s keynote, you may also want to read the transcript below – because you’ll want to read them again and again as you chart a course from now to 2020.

The only things missing in the transcript below are the unscripted remarks of Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects, Nick Woodman, CEO of GoPro, and Chris Milk, CEO of Vrse, who Kyncl invited on stage to share their stories.

“Thank you. It’s an honor to be back delivering a keynote here at CES, especially just one day after my former boss Reed Hastings. The last time I was here was in 2012. I had been at YouTube just a little over a year.

And I really wanted to impress all of you, so I did what a lot of executives do at CES: I made a few predictions.

I said that by 2020, 90 percent of all internet traffic was going to be video traffic.

I talked about Michelle Phan, a young girl who had a makeup channel on YouTube that was drawing a ton of viewers and told you that she would be a major success.

And I also said that by 2020, 75 percent of all video people watched in the US was going to be transmitted through the internet.

So how did I do?

First, internet traffic. Cisco predicts that video will actually reach around 90 percent of global internet traffic by 2019—so a full year ahead of schedule.”

—- For the full transcript of Kyncl’s keynote, visit http://bit.ly/1ZkNgQr (link is external)