The inaugural YouTube Festival Pakistan brought together brands, businesses and creators across two legs, held in Karachi on 19 October and Lahore on 22 October. The festival opened in Karachi with the iconic beat of Coke Studio’s “Pasoori”—a deliberate choice reflecting the platform’s global cultural impact. The hit recently became one of the first Pakistani music videos to surpass one billion views on YouTube, with nearly 90 percent of those views coming from over 60 countries outside Pakistan.
Pakistan is home to one of the world’s fastest-growing YouTube ecosystems
Pakistan is home to one of the world’s fastest-growing YouTube ecosystems, with creators attracting audiences locally and internationally. Today, 60 million Pakistanis enjoy content on YouTube[1]. Pakistani channels uploaded 20 million hours over the past year, that is 38 minutes of new content every single second. For advertisers, that scale offers opportunities to reach audiences through content they actively choose, from entertainment to everyday interests, including TV dramas.
“Pakistan is undergoing an unprecedented digital inflection point, and YouTube sits at the very heart of this transformation,” said Farhan Qureshi, Cluster Director for Google Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand & Frontier Markets. “From milestone moments like Coke Studio’s ‘Pasoori’ hitting one billion views to local creators uploading 20 million hours of content in a single year, YouTube in Pakistan has become one of the fastest-growing in the world. Following the official opening of our Google office in Pakistan, our focus is clear: to make YouTube as local as possible—for Pakistanis, by Pakistanis. By bringing together culture, creators, and conversion at the first-ever YouTube Festival Pakistan, we are equipping brands and businesses with the roadmap to turn this massive momentum into sustainable economic growth.”
“Achieving 13 billion watch hours, with 20 of our dramas each crossing one billion views, is an extraordinary milestone. More than just numbers, it is a testament to the universal appeal of Pakistani storytelling and the incredible opportunities YouTube has created for our content, talent and creative industry,” said Mir Ibrahim Rahman, Chief Executive Officer, Geo Television Network.
Blending cultural moments with commercial opportunity
Google’s confidence in Pakistan is reflected in its growing local presence, including the recent opening of its first office in the country. According to PTA, 70 percent of Pakistanis have access to the internet, while Pakistan ranks as the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market based on its three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Together, these figures highlight the scale and momentum of Pakistan’s digital opportunity.
Brands are already seeing results. Unilever’s Sunsilk connected with Gen Z through popular drama content, driving market leadership through YouTube, while Nestlé Everyday built its Ramadan campaign around food, entertainment and tailored Sehri and Iftar messaging, owning key cultural moments during Ramadan through YouTube high impact placements. It serves as the emotional canvas for everyday stories while unlocking strong media results. Everyday’s Ramadan initiatives recorded 9.4 percent value growth and 4.8 percent volume growth, proving YouTube can help drive powerful business results. YouTube is the only platform that brings true Brand Building and hard-working Performance together in one seamless, AI-powered engine. Easypaisa unlocked incremental business growth by scaling Demand Gen campaigns across YouTube and other Google surfaces, targeting audiences from sports fans to drama lovers. A Google causal impact study estimated a 30 percent relative lift in app installs, equivalent to 1.3 million incremental installs.
“At easypaisa, our focus is on leveraging technology and data-driven innovation to make digital financial services accessible to more Pakistanis. Our collaboration with YouTube has enabled us to move beyond traditional performance metrics and measure the true impact of our marketing investments. Through Demand Gen, we have not only driven incremental app installs but also strengthened daily customer engagement, reinforcing our commitment to sustainable & measurable growth”, said Hani Hassan, Head of Growth & Analytics easypaisa Digital Bank
Building partnerships that deliver with Creators
Working with creators goes beyond featuring influencers in a campaign. It means understanding how each creator and each piece of content can help achieve a brand’s objectives. At the Lahore leg, WildLens by Abrar brought his perspective on taking Urdu- and Punjabi-speaking audiences across borders through travel storytelling, while Menahil Temur shared how she started her journey on YouTube on Minoqtopus exploring complex subjects. through in-depth video explanations. Their work demonstrates how distinctive voices can build communities around shared curiosity.
The festival brought these creator perspectives into conversation with Unilever’s Humza Mahfooz in Karachi and Pepsi’s Ayesha Khan in Lahore, exploring how branded assets should be balanced with creator assets, boosted with the right paid media investments.
Creator Media Bundles and Partnership Ads offer ways to extend those collaborations, while Demand Gen helps connect discovery with customer acquisition. For advertisers, the opportunity is to build partnerships that remain relevant beyond a single campaign. From Karachi to Lahore, the festival carried forward a shared conversation about how the cultural connections sparked on YouTube can translate into business growth.
Backed by more than a decade of investment and its country office, Google is helping Pakistan’s advertisers connect cultural understanding with the tools to pursue measurable growth.
