YouTube may have been born in the Bay Area’s San Bruno, but it’s growing up right here in Los Angeles.
Founded in 2005, Google-owned YouTube made headlines July 12 by announcing that YouTube TV, the company’s live streaming service, now has more than 5 million paid subscribers and “trialers,” to make it as the largest internet TV subscription service in the United States, topping Hulu + Live TV, which has 4.1 million subscribers as of April.
YouTube’s video-sharing platform boasts more than 2.6 billion users worldwide, with more than 2 million creators monetizing their videos through sharing ad revenue via the YouTube Partner Program.
And a lot of the creative energy fueling YouTube’s growth is happening in Los Angeles.
In 2019, Google’s Playa Vista location opened in Howard Hughes’ historic Spruce Goose hangar, housing Google and YouTube team members in creative spaces spread over 450,000 square feet. The company also has corporate offices in Santa Monica’s quirky Frank Gehry-designed Binoculars Building.
That same year, Google announced it had leased the entirety of Brentwood-based Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. and Santa Monica-based Macerich Co.’s 584,000-square-foot Westside Pavilion shopping mall redevelopment. The new space, called One Westside, will include Google office space as well as independent retail, restaurants and communal spaces.
Just as the Playa Vista offices maintain the feel of an airplane hangar, plans call for One Westside to retain its shopping plaza identity, perhaps with escalators and other touches that will please the mall-rat generation.
Setting itself apart
That growth also makes Los Angeles the perfect place for Angela Courtin, vice president of YouTube Marketing and co-site lead of Google’s Playa Vista office. She thrives on the melding of technology and Hollywood creativity that distinguishes Los Angeles from tech-centric Silicon Valley.
“I love being able to speak to the world about YouTube,” Courtin said. “The creator economy is so important to me, it’s reshaping the power dynamic … I’m really proud to work at YouTube, and I think what we’re able to do can really change the world. And I would argue that L.A. is becoming an important component to our strategy in terms of attracting talent and content development.”
Courtin, who holds a B.S. in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University and a master’s in management and marketing from the same institution, began her career in Washington, D.C., becoming active in LGBTQ politics and advocacy.
She left D.C. for L.A. in 2000 and moved into a series of marketing positions in traditional Hollywood production companies, including Fox Broadcasting, Relativity Media and MTV Networks, before moving into YouTube’s creative-content sphere.
Courtin also has served as president of Dentsu Aegis Network US, a company at which she also held the title of chief content officer for Aegis Media and president and founder of Aegis’s global content agency the Story Lab.
She is a veteran of MySpace and was an associate producer on HBO’s “Big Love.”
“I went from one company town to another,” she joked during a recent conversation at Google’s sprawling Playa Vista offices. “What I wanted to do is exchange storytelling through politics with storytelling through media … it just gave me a bigger platform to tell the story.”
Courtin is responsible for creating YouTube Theater in Los Angeles as well as multiple YouTube Originals productions and premieres. YouTube Theater, a 6,000-seat arena next to SoFi Stadium in Hollywood Park, opened a year ago as YouTube’s move into the world of live events.
Creativity meets business acumen
YouTube’s chief business officer, Robert Kyncl, said Courtin has just the right knack for both the creative and commercial sides of the business.
“Obviously marketing is a lot of creative work,” he said. “But you’re also spending money, which means it’s got to have a certain ROI (return on investment). And sometimes you have to devise unique approaches in order to achieve both. That’s what she is good at.”
For Courtin, the story always includes her gender identity. She’s not just “out,” she’s loud and proud and sees being an LGBTQ activist as an integral part of both her personal and business lives.
Though she postponed coming out until after her college years, “once I was out, I was out,” she said emphatically. “I make it apparent on my resume, on my LinkedIn and everything I do, because I want to be someone who is representative of the community. I still get calls and DMs from people saying, ‘thank you for being as out as you were, as a female executive.’”
Rita Ferro, president at Disney Advertising, has worked with Courtin on various projects over the years and calls Courtin a “true innovator.”
“There are many firsts that I am proud of – from YouTube TV being the first-ever sole presenter of both NBA and WNBA Finals, to bringing QR-code innovation to the broadcast utilizing ESPN and NBA talent – it’s Angela’s collaborative spirit and her push for our sales team to break boundaries that make her such a great partner,” Ferro wrote in an e-mail.
Added Ferro, “Angela is a champion and role model for women and diversity, equity, and inclusion in our industry. She recently represented Google/YouTube at our annual espnW Summit last fall, where she spoke with Hannah Storm on stage about the importance of supporting women’s sports from a coverage and sponsor perspective. Angela also spoke of the importance of raising the awareness of mental health issues amongst young adults within the LGBTQ community.”
What we’re able
to do can really change the world.
ANGELA COURTIN
YouTube
Courtin, who lives in Santa Monica, said the Covid years led businesspeople to “come out,” if you will, as human beings, rather than maintaining the façade of the perfect employee.
Patterning herself after a pandemic YouTube phenomenon of “Eat With Me” video meetups between strangers, Courtin created “Dinner With Me” encounters on screen with company employees.“I talked about how I had changed as a leader,” she said. “I became more vulnerable, accessible and a lot messier.
“My team knows that I’m a single mom and that I lost my partner (Maya Amoils, who also worked at Google) to cancer in January,” she added. “I have an 11-year-old daughter. They are part of my life. And I am queer and there is no doubt about that … I use that as a conversation starter, as well as giving people permission to ask questions.”
She is open to questions about her too-brief relationship with Amoils, too. They had about a year together as a couple.
“She had Stage 4 ovarian cancer … I knew falling in love with her that she had cancer, and I knew time was limited,” Courtin said. “But I think when you are given that type of prognosis you learn several things. You learn to live with gratitude. You learn to live presently. That’s what we were able to do with her life. It was an inflection point that will shape my life forever.”
Courtin, who has a second home, ranch and winery in Ojai, said she is determined to maintain the balance between job dedication and burnout for both herself and her team. “How can I market something if I don’t actually belong to the world that I’m marketing?” she mused.
