Kevin Mayer, co-CEO of Candle Media, the company that owns CoComelon producer Moonbug Entertainment, has lamented the changeable nature of YouTube’s algorithm.
Speaking at the Royal Television Society’s Cambridge Convention, the former Disney executive said YouTube can slash kids studio Moonbug’s views by billions with small tweaks to its content promotion engine.
Mayer lauded the “incredible economy” YouTube has created in sharing ad revenue, but he raised concerns about its dominance as the biggest TV platform in the U.S.
“YouTube’s become more difficult. They’re hard to deal with at times. They have good intentions, but they tweak their algorithm, and all of a sudden, instead of 12 billion views, we get 9 billion views that month,” Mayer explained. “The power and the global nature of those platforms is really undeniable, and that is where the audience is going.”
Moonbug has more than 200M subscribers across its YouTube channels, and Mayer said the company has to create its own “monetization mechanisms” to smooth out “bumpy” ad revenue.
Tom Staggs and Mayer’s Candle Media acquired Moonbug in a deal worth up to $3BN in November 2021.
In July, Deadline analysed CoComelon’s importance to Netflix, revealing the series generated a whopping 637M streams, nearly 2% of all TV series viewing on Netflix since 2023, comfortably making it the streamer’s biggest kids show.
Although this includes Netflix original, CoComelon Lane, and the ratings for licensed episodes have declined over the past two years, the streamer will be losing these views when CoComelon switches to Disney+ in 2027.
