By now everyone knows that Google has acquired YouTube in an all-stock deal worth $1.65 billion. Leading up to the deal, both YouTube and Google signed distribution deals with music labels.More than likely, YT was trying to lock down the major labels in an effort to elleviate copyright-lawsuit concerns to both Google and Yahoo!. But this move could signal an eventual move to a subscription service for YouTube.
Either way, Google now needs to get a LOT of money back from their purchase.
Peter Kim did some number-crunching, and found that Google paid $167 per video for YouTube. Yikes. Obviously, Google has to do some hustling to get that money back. More ad placements before/after and alongside videos are a likely solution. But again, Google may decide to make YouTube a subscription service, or at least, offer a pay version that doesn't include ads.
Either way, the bloom is likely off the rose for YT, and the community that built YouTube may consider leaving if more ads and a subscription model are in the works.
And when a site such as YouTube loses its 'by the people, for the people' feel, the community will go away. That could mean a boost to Revver. Users of YT will eventually realize that they are uploading videos and Google is making money off them, so why not upload their videos to Revver and pocket the change themselves? And as we see here, Revver's traffic continues to climb.
If Revver is smart, they'll be making moves right now to strengthen and empower their community, because it's going to be very difficult for YouTube's popularity to go anywhere but down from here. Those users that leave YouTube will go somewhere.
Opportunity is about to come calling, will be interesting to see who is in place to pick up the phone.
2 comments:
Man, that's a tough one. I don't really see YouTube switching over to a pre-roll ad format like Revver (or is it post-roll? I can't remember).
Either way, it's an interesting battle. As video viewers, I think it's safe to say that most people would rather go ad-free, but the video producers (who are also viewers) would rather the viewers (themselves) watch the ad with commercial and pocket a couple bucks.
Or, all they really ever wanted was attention, so they stick to the place with the most perceived visibility.
It'll be interesting to see it all play out, that's for sure.
Metacafe.com has a even better deal. They pay you just for getting views! I saw a video were the guy had made $22,420! I took a screen shot of it:
http://notcoolman1.blogspot.com This picture was taken a few days ago so I'm sure he has made even more money by now.
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