Looking to get a better handle on the latest trends and shifts in online content consumption?

This will help – today, YouTube has published its 2023 Creative Trends report, which looks at the latest key shifts in audience interests and behaviors, based on user surveys conducted in 14 countries, along with internal analysis of hundreds of trends.

The 14-page report, which you can download here, includes overviews of all the key trends of note, but in this post, we’ll take a look at some of the highlights.

For this year’s Creative Trends Report, YouTube has identified four major subtopics of note:

• Widespread online personalization – New creative tools and formats have increased viewer expectations around experiences that are more customized to their interests
• Mainstream casual creativity – Along the same line, viewers are also adopting different levels of engagement, and creators should be working to invite variable fan experiences
• Content experiences built for viewers – Creators should also be looking to diversify their outputs to meet different audience demands, like podcasts, Shorts, live, etc.
• AI-enabled creative possibility – New creative tools enable new levels of audience participation, which also provide new opportunities for creators to spark trends.

Each of these trends has its own highlight section in the report, which looks at how audiences are adapting to each, and how creators are building these new elements into their content.

There are some valuable insights and notes here, which could get you thinking on how you can incorporate these trends and shifts into your content approach, and what types of engagement you should be aiming to evoke with your uploads.

YouTube has also published a ‘guided tour’ of the report with creator Airrack, providing another way to interpret the data.

While it’s also published a new interview with Kevin Allocca, its Head of Culture and Trends.

There are some valuable insights here, and if you’re looking to get a better handle on key creative shifts, on YouTube and more broadly, it’s worth tuning in and seeing what you can take away from these data-backed notes.

You can read YouTube’s full 2023 Culture and Trends report here.