YouTube

Time magazine described YouTube as the beast with a billion eyes. It is just 14 years old, but is growing at a fast pace. Every minute several hours of video get uploaded to YouTube. It gets a trillion page-views a year. Google bought YouTube in October 2006. Its massive size is a mixed blessing. TV has limited options of viewing whereas YouTube sifts through billions of options . An average user spends 15 minutes on YouTube , whereas he watches on average TV for 3 hours. The upkeep of YouTube is expensive. YouTube tries to tap the ad revenue, but since YouTube does not get the kind of attention the advertisers want, it is not a preferred medium. The advertisers would not like their reputed brands to be near the random stuff , at times weird too . Google, therefore, cannot charge as much as a satellite channel for the ads. But cleaning YouTube is not the answer. It thrives on its anarchy. YouTube is based in San Bruno , California , south of San Francisco. YouTube gets a billion search queries a day. After Google, it is the second largest search engine on the Internet. But video search is not similar to web pages search. Web pages can be read, as there are words. But a computer cannot watch a movie. It cannot look at the huge string of 1’s and 0’s that make a video file. The solution is verbal description of the videos depending on user behaviour. YouTube will survive, but there should be a totally new strategy for it. The designing work is always in progress. The contents should be easily navigable. Its background colour is therefore made gray. Formerly there was a grid of videos. Now, there is a list of channels on the left hand side and the feed informs you the recent videos from those channels. Each channel has a bunch of videos grouped together on to one page. This is done by an individual user. The users organise the videos to overcome the chaos. There is a limitation to the fragmentation of cable TV. YouTube can do it infinitely. Yet, you cannot watch YouTube on TV. YouTube, however is producing its own content. By organising content, any individual can run a channel. The individual channels have subscribers. YouTube is attempting to beat TV, but in doing so it will become TV. It the dilutes its anarchic character.

YouTube Monetisation

YouTube runs ads on user-generated content and shares a portion of the revenue with the creators once they have got monetised. It keeps 45 per cent while the creator receives the balance 55 per cent. The company faced significant pressure from advertisers and users as the ads were placed alongside the offensive content. They introduced new policies that restrict monetisation of the channel. They changed YouTube partner programme which now requires many more subscribers and viewership to earn money. Earlier, a YouTube video creator was required to have only 10,000 views to become eligible for monetising his content on YouTube. Now a video creator becomes eligible only if he garners 4000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months and has at least 1000 subscribers. This should weed out spammers and bad actors.

Seasoned YouTubers with a large number of subscribers remain unaffected. Multiple channels may be a casualty or the new policy. Time and energy will be devoted to the channel that has the best prospects crossing the monetisation threshold.

There are other possibilities of earning revenue apart from Adsense. These included affiliate marketing, sponsorships and merchandising. In affiliated marketing, a link is put to the product/service that is being reviewed. If the link is clicked by the viewers and they go to the site, the creator receives a commission. Sponsorship can be built by developing a reach. They get the attention of brands. Brands are inclined to sponsor bloggers and YouTubers with an impressive reach. They pay the creator to review their products. Those who produce advertising-friendly content receive more adds.

Trailer Marketing on YouTube

The first look of the movies or trailers are released on YouTube these days. In yester years TV and theatres were used to screen trailers. These days the emphasis is on digital releases of the trailers. These are used to set down a set of expectations for the film’s run at the box office. The like and dislike ratio is observed. If dislike ratio is 8 to 10 percent, the sentiment is positive. If the ratio goes beyond that, the sentiment towards the film is mixed, or may be even negative. There are several million views for a good movie trailer, several million likes and several lac dislikes. This is leveraged to create interest in the product. Movie makers make a marketing strategy to get views, and they do not spend anything for distribution of the trailer. Making of a trailer is taken seriously. The production budgets are decent. The bits of storyline, songs and catchphrases are used to build up the launch of the first look. The cost could reach from Rs. 1 million to 10 million. It should be cut properly. On YouTube, the trailer reaches a huge audience in a very short span of time. Even the overall marketing of the movie has become digital. It is cross promoted on social media where the star cast is popular. Some trailers are launched simultaneously on TV and YouTube. It is, however, rare. Marketers learn a great deal from the feedback, of the audiences. The back end analytics help the marketer gauge the response and likeability.