MIPJUNIOR 2026 Wrap Up: YouTube debates, finance challenges, and kids in control of IP

Crayola has brought some creative inspiration to MIPCOM with a mural for delegates to take a colouring break. The mural is a colourful expression of what we stand for. We want delegates to experience the pleasure of creating together,” said EVP, head of Crayola Studios Sabrina Wiewel.

If there was a big theme of MIPJUNIOR’s opening day this year, it was the challenges of making money from kids’ content on YouTube.

In his keynote, Animaj co-founder Gregory Dray cited figures showing that kids and family content accounts for more than 15% of YouTube viewing, but generates less than 2% of its advertsing revenue.

“We cannot continue like this, otherwise, in just a few years, we'll all be out of business,” he said, adding that in his view YouTube “needs to care about the state of the industry and the fact that their domination creates some sort of responsibility”.

The theme continued in MIPJUNIOR’s The State of the Kids & Teen Industry session later that morning. It saw pocket.watch CEO Chris Williams lamenting the current situation.

“There are basically zero dollars in creating made-for-kids content on YouTube. That’s just the bottom line,” said Williams, who suggested that the ‘yield’ (revenues) on SVOD platforms like Netflix and Prime Video can be “20 to 50 times higher” than on YouTube for made-for-kids content.

YouTube’s managing director, global head of responsibility partnerships Amy Singer was on the panel, and faced up to the criticism directly.

“In no way do we think the status quo is okay,” she said. “We are actively working on it and thinking about it. We want to crack this model. It’s important that our partners trust there can be a sustainable model.”

The following day saw some praise for YouTube in the ‘Making Great Content for the Gen Z & Teen Audience’ panel. Nicolas Fisch, producer, digital first & AI at Mediawan Kids & Family, talked about using YouTube to develop mobile game Pocket Champs into a wider entertainment franchise.

“YouTube sits at the core of everything we're trying to achieve in building this franchise,” Fisch said. “YouTube is a place where we can start with shorts, where we can test gags, stories, characters, where we can scale into longer-form content.”

Hasbro’s senior director, global digital distribution and programming, Charmaine Fernandes, also hailed YouTube’s role in helping her company to test new properties.

“The old model used to be commissioning a show and then hoping for it to succeed,” she said. "What YouTube has allowed us to do is test content quickly, learn from that content, make changes required."

MIPJUNIOR’s first day also saw plenty of discussion about how kids’ content is financed. Ampere’s senior research manager Cyrine Amor presented charts showing how commissions of kids’ shows by SVOD platforms have declined sharply from their peak in 2022, while commissioning budgets for public and pay-TV broadcasters have been under severe pressure.

“We have a market in which producers increasingly, as a result of the commissioning squeeze, have to turn to launching content digitally first,” Amor said. ‘They are carrying more of the risk, and as we know, monetisation on YouTube can be challenging.”

The debate continued in a panel on ‘Who Pays For The Next Generation of Kids’ IP?’ later on day one, where the central message reflected Amor’s view that producers increasingly need to build audiences, test IP and generate revenue from a property before committing to large-scale production.

“I think the creators in smaller studios, and whoever is cold starting original IP five years from now in an age of over abundance, will have to start thinking like an entertainment studio, which means we’re going to start making some content, we're going to figure out how to sell stuff around that content,” said Nicholas Cabana, co-founder & chief creative director, Claynosaurz.

MIPJUNIOR also saw calls for kids-content producers to strive to build meaning and genuine engagement from young audiences, rather than just trying to reach the biggest number of eyeballs possible online.

“The uncomfortable truth has been that much of children’s content has been constructed to acquire, maintain and ultimately monetise a child’s gaze. It’s been awareness first, and affection later - if ever,” said Gary Pope, Kids Industries co-founder, in a sparky Sunday-morning speech.

“The attention economy was an aberration,” he added. “This 20-year experiment in using developing humans as advertising inventory is over.”

His view was shared by Dubit’s SVP, global trends David Kleeman, who urged the MIPJUNIOR audience to “seek meaning, not attention” – including by leaning into gaming as a way to build worlds around IP.

“Gen Alpha may be discovering you through your stories, but the way they’re going to become your fans is when you let them play with your world,” he said.

Or, indeed, if you let them create their own worlds around your IP. A Sunday-morning panel saw Coolabi SVP digital Jo Redfern talk about the success of Warrior Cats, an IP that started as a series of books 23 years ago, and is only getting its first TV show in 2028.

However, in the meantime fans have been creating their own Warrior Cats fan-animation (fanimation, perhaps!) on YouTube, while one built a popular Roblox game that has since been embraced by Coolabi rather than shut down.

“It’s a very, very different way of growing that franchise, and requires a level of ceding control. You can’t necessarily insist that a UGC creator sticks by your style guide,” Redfern said. “But without UGC there wouldn’t be a Disney+ show in 2028.”

Talking of Disney, Sunday’s From First Favourites to Lasting Fandom MIPJUNIOR session gave attendees an insight into that company’s evolvng kids strategy, with a group of executives unspooling its latest plans.

“There’s been a lot of disruption, especially in the kid’s space. They’re watching everything from Bluey to Squid Games. We had to activate quickly. We had to step outside of ourselves and take a look at how we were approaching our strategy,” said Disney Kids & Family president Ayo Davis.

“It looked at how we told stories with our franchises, how we were connecting with our audience and originals and in new formats and taking how our content showed up across our platforms and how we worked with our partners across the industry.”

The session explored some of Disney’s new projects, from the microdrama-esque Locker Diaries to its potential next mega-franchise Super Kitties, which is already eliciting strong fandom from its target audience.

“We take this business very seriously,” said Davis. “It’s not something we are dipping in and out of.”

Alongside all the talk of industry trends, MIPJUNIOR also had its usual riches of new shows and formats. They included French animated kids TV series Migali, which received its world premiere screening in the Debussy Theatre on Saturday.

Adapted from the bestselling French comic book series created by writer Alexandre Arlène and illustrator Fabien Öckto Lambert and published by Auzou, the series follows Migali, an enthusiastic young spider princess determined to become a future queen.