Fact 1:
YouTube is not limited to short-form user-generated material. Thousands of premium content partners, from Sony to Disney to Universal Music, and fans can find 100’s of full-length feature films and thousands of full-length TV episodes on YouTube. The world premiere of Joy Luck Club director Wayne Wang’s film, “The Princess of Nebraska,” was viewed 165,000+ times during the first 48 hours – the equivalent of landing the 15th spot on the Hollywood box office charts.
Fact 2:
YouTube videos are NOT grainy & of poor quality. Full HD videos are on YouTube, already more HD videos than any other video portal. Hundreds of thousands of HD videos are uploaded to the site every month, and tens of millions are viewed daily. Earlier this year, CNET’s WebWare called YouTube the best HD video portal on the web.
Fact 3:
Growth, Traffic and uploads are positive for YouTube’s bottom line. There’s been a lot of speculation lately about how much it costs to operate YouTube. With turnover estimates ranging from $120 million to $500 million, and costs on an equally large spectrum, it seems people can pick any number to fit any theory they have about this business. The truth is that all the infrastructure is built from scratch, which means models that use standard industry pricing are too high when it comes to costs for resources such as bandwidth. YouTube is at a point where online advertising growth is definitely good for the bottom line, not bad.
Fact 4:
Online advertisers are not afraid of YouTube. Over 70% of Ad Age Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube last year. They’re promoted videos,overlays and bought the home page. Many are organizing competitions that encourage the uploading of user videos to their branded channels, or running advertising exclusively on popular user partner content (see Carl’s Jr.). Online advertisers just want control, so YouTube is continuing to invent tools and targeting products that give advertisers more control over where their ads appear on the site. More will follow on that scale soon.
Fact 5:
YouTube is only monetizing 3-5% of the site. This oft-cited statistic is outdated and wrong, and continues to create much speculation. In my opinion, the percentage is of less importance than the total number of monetized views, and YouTube is now assisting partners generate money from hundreds of millions of video views every week in the US (and billions across the globe), more than any other video site has total views. Monetized views have more than tripled in the past year, as they’re adding partner material very quickly.
