Google takes over Youtube: what this means to Web Publishers
Did you miss joining Adsense at the right time? Are you ready to join the new revolution now?
In a multi-million pound deal valuing around US$ 1.6 billion, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, creators of Youtube, who till recently were sustaining the company from credit card debts operating from a California Garage just 19 months ago, are now latest to join the Multibillionaire elite club. Google successfully fought off arch rival Yahoo in biggest internet deals in recent times. Yahoo may have now to content itself by acquiring Facebook, second most popular networking site. Way back in Nineties, when Google launched Adsense, it just changed the way, web industry worked. Hitherto unknown concept of paying only when somebody visits your ad and not paying on per impression basis, just changed the face of the industry. Added to this, the Google’s strong method of detection of invalid clicks, made it industry leader with which had no significant second in the market. Now those who upload their clips on Youtube will get a slice of advertising revenue on the pages containing their videos.
With more than 72 million users and choice of more than 100 million video clips ranging from bizarre home videos to snippets of TV shows, music gigs and sports events, Youtube changed the way people consume media. It is not that Youtube has been entirely free from controversy. Many of its videos apparently breaching copyright laws but such had been its following that several major record companies, including Universal, had signed deals with YouTube to distribute clips and protect the rights of their artists. YouTube is already working on an automated system that will enable it to determine whether copyrighted material is used in video clips submitted by users. YouTube currently removes all copyrighted material if the official owner requests the content be taken down, but still complaints galore. YouTube is rolling out technology designed to automatically spot copyrighted material that users upload without the permission of media companies, and then to share ad revenue with those companies. The system relies partly on what's known as "fingerprinting" -- comparing audio uploaded to the site to unique attributes of copyrighted content it already knows.
Youtube is going to be more popular than the competition as it wont force you to see stupid ads before each video. YouTube with Google is soon going to become an exciting and powerful media platform that would complement Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Now plans are afoot to share revenue with those who upload video clips. Google plans to turn a profit by adding adverts to the site. Webmasters planning to monetize through this new tool can provide content to internet users in the US to view music videos, artist interviews, and other footage and have revenue sharing for the content sponsored through a Google advertising-supported revenue-sharing agreement. This would truly embrace the power of user-generated content and allow users to use their content and be able to benefit to generate revenue.
While there are no revenue estimates available, premises are there that for every 10 second pre-roll video at a CPM and splitting the earnings in a Google Adsense way you could wind up with a 0M a year business. But this still remains an estimate and there are a couple of issues.
Major issues are:
1. At present Real branding folks do not just throw their advertisements on content. They want to be associated with high-quality editorial.
2. Fear of getting sued for copyright violations for video content. So far, YouTube could escape as it was not is such a limelight, but how far it would be able to escape is any body’s guess.
3. What would be the adspace and what would be the CPM rate? Estimates vary from 10% CPM rate to 27% CPMs.
4. So much buzz about a company with no real business plan yet. the question can they translate traffic into real revenue still continues to baffle many webmasters?
5. The over head of serving a video in bandwidth costs is much higher then serving a text ad.
6. Many reputed content providers expect an upfront, non-refundable payment for their exclusive content.
