July 22, 2009 at 15:11YouTube debunks myths
The YouTube leadership is unhappy that independent analysts are trying to evaluate their business, publish calculations on the number of visitors, the number of views, revenue and expenses of the site, based on hosting prices and traffic. Today, whoever you ask on Habré, everyone knows that YouTube alone pays a million dollars a day for traffic (using this link you can see other interesting statistics).
We all know that the service is terribly unprofitable, and at the same time it hosts low-quality amateur video, and it will never work to monetize such content. These are the well-known myths about YouTube. However, the management of the service decided to "clean up" and debunk these myths . We translate the message on their official blog almost verbatim, however, providing it with commentsindependent analysts.
Myth 1. On YouTube, only short amateur videos.
We have thousands of partners providing premium content. The site has thousands of feature films . At the world premiere of "Princess of Nebraska", the film was watched by 165,000 site visitors in the first 48 hours, this is the 15th place in the world in views if you use the standard Hollywood methodology for the number of viewers in cinemas.
A comment. I wonder what is the percentage of “professional content” on YouTube? Hardly more than 1%. By the link that they give as an example, we see 12 videos, of which seven are trailers, not feature films.
Myth 2. YouTube videos are grainy and low quality.
Just eight months ago, we launched the HD video section , and today we already have more HD video than on any other site on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of HD videos are uploaded to us every month, and tens of millions of views are recorded every day. In one of the blogs, we even deserved the title of the best HD video service on the entire web.
No one doubts that most of the videos of poor quality are not the fault of YouTube, just the authors themselves do not know how to shoot or use wretched cameras on mobile phones. However, the well-known problems of the YouTube flash player, which loads content too slowly and slows down. The quality of this player has not changed for the better for three years since Google bought YouTube.
Myth 3. Traffic, hosting and popularity growth bring serious losses to service owners.
How much we pay for traffic - no one knows. Independent analysts take these numbers from their heads. But in fact, our entire infrastructure is made by our own hands, so standard cost estimates are not applicable to us at all. And the increase in popularity brings us profit, not loss.
There’s nothing to comment on. It is clear that no one knows the exact numbers, everyone has different sources of information and different assessment models. Google could easily put an end to these conversations if it simply took and announced how much it actually pays for the traffic. But no.
Myth 4. Advertisers are afraid of YouTube.
More than 70% of the list of 100 largest US advertisers were hosted on YouTube in 2008. They bought our homepage, promos, banner ads and video inserts in the content. Many created corporate channels on YouTube and organized contests for users, inviting them to publish amateur videos on a given topic. We even had an exclusive advertisement, which was not placed anywhere else. As you can see, the possibilities of the sea. Advertisers simply want more control over advertising, and we solve this problem by developing additional tools for managing advertising campaigns on YouTube.
Without information on the amount of contracts, a figure of 70% is meaningless. In addition, YouTube will not be able to monetize through banners. They will have to find a viable monetization model for the videos themselves, but there is no such model yet. Again, they don’t tell us what percentage of advertising is received from “video inserts”, but how many from banners. It is clear that you can sell the first page at a high price, but it will never pay back the huge costs of the portal.
Myth 5. YouTube monetizes only 3-5% of the site.
This figure is taken from our own statistics, and it’s very old and unreliable. In fact, you need to take into account not the percentage of monetization, but the absolute number of ad views. We are now helping partners generate hundreds of millions of ad views each week in the United States (and billions in the world), and this is more than content views from any other video service on the Internet. Monetized views more than tripled over the past year.
And here he is, the moment of truth. YouTube’s main curse is the inability to profit. However, they hint that the percentage of monetized views has increased. However, all the numbers are still hidden. If the service did not work at a loss, they would directly say so. But it is clear that they cannot say this.
The monetization percentage shows what is the ratio between ad views and normal video views. If last year the service shipped 5 billion videos monthly with a monetization percentage of 3-5%, then it provided about 250 million advertising impressions per month. Now this figure is several times higher.
According to AdAge experts, YouTube monetization in the US has now grown to 8.7%. The number of video views is 6.8 billion per month . You can count it yourself.
We all know that the service is terribly unprofitable, and at the same time it hosts low-quality amateur video, and it will never work to monetize such content. These are the well-known myths about YouTube. However, the management of the service decided to "clean up" and debunk these myths . We translate the message on their official blog almost verbatim, however, providing it with commentsindependent analysts.
Myth 1. On YouTube, only short amateur videos.
We have thousands of partners providing premium content. The site has thousands of feature films . At the world premiere of "Princess of Nebraska", the film was watched by 165,000 site visitors in the first 48 hours, this is the 15th place in the world in views if you use the standard Hollywood methodology for the number of viewers in cinemas.
A comment. I wonder what is the percentage of “professional content” on YouTube? Hardly more than 1%. By the link that they give as an example, we see 12 videos, of which seven are trailers, not feature films.
Myth 2. YouTube videos are grainy and low quality.
Just eight months ago, we launched the HD video section , and today we already have more HD video than on any other site on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of HD videos are uploaded to us every month, and tens of millions of views are recorded every day. In one of the blogs, we even deserved the title of the best HD video service on the entire web.
No one doubts that most of the videos of poor quality are not the fault of YouTube, just the authors themselves do not know how to shoot or use wretched cameras on mobile phones. However, the well-known problems of the YouTube flash player, which loads content too slowly and slows down. The quality of this player has not changed for the better for three years since Google bought YouTube.
Myth 3. Traffic, hosting and popularity growth bring serious losses to service owners.
How much we pay for traffic - no one knows. Independent analysts take these numbers from their heads. But in fact, our entire infrastructure is made by our own hands, so standard cost estimates are not applicable to us at all. And the increase in popularity brings us profit, not loss.
There’s nothing to comment on. It is clear that no one knows the exact numbers, everyone has different sources of information and different assessment models. Google could easily put an end to these conversations if it simply took and announced how much it actually pays for the traffic. But no.
Myth 4. Advertisers are afraid of YouTube.
More than 70% of the list of 100 largest US advertisers were hosted on YouTube in 2008. They bought our homepage, promos, banner ads and video inserts in the content. Many created corporate channels on YouTube and organized contests for users, inviting them to publish amateur videos on a given topic. We even had an exclusive advertisement, which was not placed anywhere else. As you can see, the possibilities of the sea. Advertisers simply want more control over advertising, and we solve this problem by developing additional tools for managing advertising campaigns on YouTube.
Without information on the amount of contracts, a figure of 70% is meaningless. In addition, YouTube will not be able to monetize through banners. They will have to find a viable monetization model for the videos themselves, but there is no such model yet. Again, they don’t tell us what percentage of advertising is received from “video inserts”, but how many from banners. It is clear that you can sell the first page at a high price, but it will never pay back the huge costs of the portal.
Myth 5. YouTube monetizes only 3-5% of the site.
This figure is taken from our own statistics, and it’s very old and unreliable. In fact, you need to take into account not the percentage of monetization, but the absolute number of ad views. We are now helping partners generate hundreds of millions of ad views each week in the United States (and billions in the world), and this is more than content views from any other video service on the Internet. Monetized views more than tripled over the past year.
And here he is, the moment of truth. YouTube’s main curse is the inability to profit. However, they hint that the percentage of monetized views has increased. However, all the numbers are still hidden. If the service did not work at a loss, they would directly say so. But it is clear that they cannot say this.
The monetization percentage shows what is the ratio between ad views and normal video views. If last year the service shipped 5 billion videos monthly with a monetization percentage of 3-5%, then it provided about 250 million advertising impressions per month. Now this figure is several times higher.
According to AdAge experts, YouTube monetization in the US has now grown to 8.7%. The number of video views is 6.8 billion per month . You can count it yourself.