YouTube celebrated its 20th anniversary with a huge celebration in Paris this week, drawing more than 1,200 people to the 18th-century landmark Opéra Comique and featuring featured speakers from Banijay, Media One, and LVMH, as well as YouTube’s biggest local stars Squeegee (Lucas Auchard), Hugo Decrypt (Hugo Travers), and Andy Eller.
The event kicked off with Justine Ryst, YouTube’s managing director for France and Southern Europe, who released key numbers highlighting the platform’s impact on local economies and viewing habits. Ryst said YouTube contributed more than €1 billion to France’s GDP in 2024 and created 24,000 full-time equivalent jobs in France. He also pointed out that 43 million French people watch YouTube every month, spending an average of 52 minutes on the platform per day. More than $100 billion has been paid out to creators, artists, and media companies around the world in the past four years.
Against this backdrop, top French production companies Banijay and Media One took center stage and outlined how they are working closely with YouTube talent to create new revenue streams and reach younger viewers who have largely stopped watching linear TV and are now discovering global formats, local programming and new talent first on YouTube. Banijay France boss Alexia Laroche Joubert and Media One Prod president Justine Planchon (who is responsible for all of the group’s unscripted documentary productions) outlined their respective strategies for leveraging the creator economy in a dynamic 10-minute discussion.
Laroche Joubert spoke about the company’s new Entertainment Creators Lab, launched in June in partnership with YouTube and announced at Mipcom. The initiative saw five YouTube talents who have published at least two videos with 100,000 views reinvent some of the company’s flagship entertainment formats for the platform’s digitally native audience. Each of these five talents received up to 50,000 euros to produce their pilots.
“Our focus was to find out what we could offer to the creators of the new economy,” said Laroche Joubert, noting that Banijay’s biggest brands, “Survivor” and “MasterChef,” have visited 20 territories and are now available on YouTube in addition to terrestrial television. “We have a treasure trove of IP and formats. Our goal was to find formats that they might be interested in, often formats that they had seen when they were younger. We handed these formats to them and said, ‘Please adapt it for YouTube.'” The executive said the initiative was “a huge success because[the company]was able to match these creators with creative talent from the television world.”
Media One, which just announced a joint venture with LuckyChap in Europe, is similarly embracing YouTube talent, Planchon said, pointing to recent collaborations such as Squeegee’s documentary Merci Internet for Amazon and Lena Situations, which hosted the Oscars red carpet for Disney Plus. Media One also experimented with a hybrid release model with Orelsan, the popular French rapper who starred in the documentary series Orelsan: Don’t Show It to Anyone. Season 1 of Orelsan was released exclusively on YouTube, and season 2 was released on Amazon Prime Video.
“This new generation brings hope, but it also brings expertise,” Planchon said, noting that Media One’s partnership with YouTube dates back to the company’s founding 10 years ago and now boasts a total of 57 million subscribers and 5 billion views across its channels. “Working with Squeegee, I learned a lot. We have a lot to learn from the new generation, just as they have a lot to learn from us.”
Although both companies are deep in the intersection of social media and content creation, MediaOne and Banijay take different approaches to brand building. Planchon said Media One is known as a “house for talent.” “We couldn’t have made ‘F1’ without Brad Pitt. We couldn’t have made ‘La Flamme’ without Jonathan Cohen. We couldn’t have made ‘Call My Agent’ without Camille Cotin.” That philosophy now fully applies to digital creators,” she says.
But Laroche-Joubert said Banijay was keen to invest in intellectual property rather than people. “IP is less local, less volatile, and more portable than talent,” she said.
Joubert went on to detail three ways Banijay works with creators on YouTube. The first pillar is monetizing the company’s vast catalog. “We have 600 channels around the world, 2 billion subscribers, and we monetize, so we’re grateful to YouTube for that because it’s one of the platforms that shares the revenue with us,” she said. The second is hybrid content built around upstream, downstream, and traditional programs developed in partnership with creators. Third, we support creators as they transition to traditional media or expand their formats internationally. “Banijay is a global group and the talent is local, so we can help them have a broader perspective to leverage their format. They will experience what we experienced 25 years ago: leverage their format globally,” Joubert said.
Planchon said the group will launch an internal event called Meet the Content Creators, where digital talent will pitch ideas to Media One producers, who will invest in development. The banner also produces exclusive content for YouTube, including a dedicated “Miraculous Ladybug” series that was later aired on other stations. Finally, Media One keeps its existing brands alive through YouTube, whether through missed viewings like the popular primetime talk show “C’est à Vous” or by giving old IPs like “Un Gars et une Fille” (a comedy short by Jean Dujardin and Alexandra Lamy) a second life online on YouTube. “It’s the cycle of life,” she said. “It never stops.”
Similar to Banijay, Mediawan also spins off IP in a variety of formats, including live. Planchon cited the “Monte Cristo” series as an example, which he said consists of a feature film (“The Count of Monte Cristo,” which sold more than 9 million admissions in France in 2024), an international series (directed by Bill August and starring Sam Claflin), a cinema concert, and an adventure game planned for M6. Through brand partnerships, Media One is also adapting LeBron James’s US premium series “The Shop” for the French market.
When asked if YouTube is revolutionizing the way viewers consume content, Joubert agreed. “YouTube is inventing new constructs for creation and new constructs for consumption,” she said. She noted that Banijay and Mediawan have historically been B2B companies selling programming to broadcasters, but are now turning into B2C players. “We offer the world’s best IP, incredible production expertise and, crucially, brand safety for brands,” she said.
The YouTube extravaganza in Paris culminated with an exhilarating live performance by French singer-songwriter Santa. Santa sang “Popcorn Sale,” along with other hits, and the entire audience stood up and applauded.
