• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 5 hours ago

YouTube's yearly advertising revenue is now higher than four major legacy companies -- Disney, NBC, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery -- at $40.4 billion a year ago, according to MoffettNathanson Research.

Does that make those big TV advertising brands blink... a bit? Those four major TV-centric media companies are at $37.8 billion per year -- and declining.

Still, YouTube has some distance to go to surpass all legacy TV networks, stations, and platforms in total advertising at around $60 billion per year, depending on the estimates.

Even then, as Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics notes, many of those YouTube advertising deals are not in competition with legacy TV network advertisers -- the big-spending brands.

The difference may still come down to perceptions of content: premium versus not-so-premium.

The former is a description of content still attached to legacy media’s long-form half-hour, hour or longer produced scripted or unscripted content.

YouTube still largely consists of the now old-school term -- user-generated content.

And in that content-analysis for YouTube, there remain other persistent issues.

For many, buying YouTube for hesitant major brands is still be a “brand safety” thing -- even with improved Google-owned AI monitoring.

Add to that transparency issues over the specifics of a media deal are still cleared with legacy media versus continued “walled garden” of Google -- where other digital first streamers have the same issues.

In addition, there is a still positive significant reach value for TV, when it comes to broad-base attention, brand awareness, and other metrics.

Finally, there needs to be a discussion of other issues of measurement -- still not entirely on a like-to-like comparison when analyzing gross rating points versus impressions, clicks and other data.

The bottom line is: rough estimates put big TV brands' spend at 60% to 70% of their video budgets using top of-the-funnel TV platforms with around 30% to 40% for digital platforms. And a big piece of later going to YouTube.

But note all this is still fluid state -- for the future: Young Gen Zers love YouTube -- a nearly 80% "favorability" number compared to other social media platforms.

With that as a prelude to the future, should we mull what this kind of “favorability” means when it comes to analysis in sizing up YouTube versus traditional live, linear TV stuff?

Would that sway more brands to pull more money from TV?