YouTube: Amateur hour over

K

kylevant

Well-known member
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20127362-93/amateur-hour-over-youtube-going-prime-time/

Amateur hour may not exactly be over at YouTube, but it looks like the time has finally come for the sleeping kitties and exploding pop bottles to make some room for professionally produced content...Google will give most of the producers an advance of $5 million in exchange for a promise to produce a couple hours of programming a week...
Click to expand...

Many of us knew it was coming. It says a lot that they have to pay people to produce decent content - like there's not enough on there in the first place.
 
that's great, but then they turn youtube into a VOD TV channel, like there are so many.
and what's next, pay per view ?
the would better give this money to unknown people who want to make movie, than to madonna
to produce the sub usual bulls**t we can already see on TV.
be ready to see kitten and mentos replaced by cheap reality TV.
 
Yeah, I'd rather see these $5 million payments going out to indie filmmakers - I'm sure it'll be put to better use.
 
I read an article a while back that reported that Google/YT was giving money to indies for content development, but only those in close enough proximity for home office inspectors to drop in whenever they felt like it. I can see the wisdom in that, but still -- a lot of very talented indies can't afford to live in that part of the world.....
 
I think it is a pretty uphill battle for web TV. If people think there are a lot of channels on a Sat or cable lineup try capturing eyeballs over the entire internet. I agree, this money would be better spent with a purpose, not just a network style ratings grab. (if that exisits on the internet?)
 
I made two dollars off a little web TV experiment last month, which means my on-line efforts are out-performing my mutual funds..... ;-)
 
I personally know several members of the team behind the youtube channel "FreddieW" which is a top 10 channel. They get a lot of financial support from Youtube, but even with 2.5 million subscribers, averaging over 3 million views to their weekly upload...they aren't getting anywhere near 5 million in support.

They did, however, just do a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 9 episode web series with a hope to get $75k (plus 100% matching from anonymous backers) and they ended up dong $275k (again, plus 100% matching).
 
sblfilms said:
I personally know several members of the team behind the youtube channel "FreddieW" which is a top 10 channel. They get a lot of financial support from Youtube, but even with 2.5 million subscribers, averaging over 3 million views to their weekly upload...they aren't getting anywhere near 5 million in support.

They did, however, just do a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 9 episode web series with a hope to get $75k (plus 100% matching from anonymous backers) and they ended up dong $275k (again, plus 100% matching).
Click to expand...

The freddiew team pull in anywhere between $750k - $1.5 million/year off AdSense advertising alone. Throw in the sponsored content and I wouldn't be surprised if they're pulling in $2+ million in revenue. With the size of their team, I'd imagine that their company is easily profitable. They don't need (or necessarily want) outside investment, as I'm pretty sure they own 100% of their company and have no real reason to give up control. Kickstarter was a smart way to raise money without giving up any ownership and I hope their project turns out well.

The Youtube Pro deals are investments, but Youtube recuperates 100% of that in ad rev before a 50/50 split starts happening. Any companies trying to become profitable off the Youtube deals will either need an enormous hit (something along the lines of close to 500+ million views at current UGC CPM rates) or hope that Youtube's new dedicated ad sales team can sell ads at cable/tv rates. In which case, they'd only need to match high-end cable numbers at a more manage-able 50-100 million views/season.

Google is making a relatively cheap bet (Google has $42billion in cash) to take a stab at an ad market thats eluded them for some time. Either way, this is a smart and necessary move by Google and I hope they gain traction from it. All the Silicon Valley big boys now have enough muscle to try to take a bite out of that $160 billion TV ad market and they will.
 
Gary Huff said:
Where did you get this info?
Click to expand...

AdSense math. AdSense pays (in general) something like $2 - $5 CPM for new media. freddiew's channel currently pulls in about 30million views/month (http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/freddiew). 30,000 * 12 months * ($2 CPM - $5 CPM) = $720k - $1.8million/year. At their traffic numbers, it's probably more towards the higher end.

People always seem to be surprised when they hear this, but they always seem to grossly underestimate the amount of traffic generated by the Top 100 Youtube channels. They also don't seem to know that Youtube is the second largest site on the internet and only trails Facebook.
 
Last edited:
Doesn't Adsense only pay per click-throughs? Are you assuming that everyone who watches one of his videos is clicking through on one of the ads?

EDIT: Wait, is CPM: click-per-million? So you're averaging one click per million views?
 
Last edited:
Gary Huff said:
Doesn't Adsense only pay per click-throughs? Are you assuming that everyone who watches one of his videos is clicking through on one of the ads?

EDIT: Wait, is CPM: click-per-million? So you're averaging one click per million views?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you don't have an AdSense account. CPM = cost per thousand views (http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=18196). AdSense is CPC (cost per click) * Clicks, but it's easier to compare numbers across different AdSense accounts with CPM (or eCPM in this case). Why ask for three numbers (Clicks * CPC / Page Views / 1000) when you can just ask for one.

I know some of the top 100 youtubers and have seen their paychecks and trust me, this estimation is correct.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top