OTT players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+Hotstar are aggressively pushing for more subscription revenues in India. Subscription revenues are going to rise much faster than advertising revenues. OTT players on an average earn 36 per cent revenues from subscriptions, and the rest comes from advertising.

Google’s YouTube is a major video-on-demand or OTT player. It takes another view. It has a market share of 43 per cent. It has 325 million unique viewers above 18. It does not invest upfront in content. Unlike its competitors, Google’s YouTube is focusing on advertising rather than subscriptions. It has a lucrative advertising model. It has been a TV for teenagers and upcountry audiences. In online ad revenue, YouTube has a 67 per cent share, but it is likely to come down to 55 per cent by 2025.

YouTube premium charges a monthly subscription free of Rs.99 to make the content ad free. YouTube music channel has a monthly subscription of Rs.129 without ads.

YouTube can offer creators of content a subscription model to be managed by YouTube on a revenue-sharing basis. YouTube has many creators in gaming, learning, news and finance. They offer subscription-like feature on their channel.

YouTube is exploring other areas such as e-commerce and targeting of small business.

Google can get into buying content, especially in sports. YouTube may exercise this option even for short videos.

Google would not like to lose its leadership in this space.