There was a provocative post yesterday on the Business Insider blog which contends that YouTube as it’s now structured is doomed. Benjamin Wayne writes that despite huge ad revenue which is certainly making a contribution to Google’s bottom line, the expenses far surpass the income—with little hope that ads alone can make YouTube profitable.
“Despite massive growth, ubiquitous global brand awareness, presidential endorsement, and the world’s greatest repository of illegally-pirated video content, Google’s massive video folly is on life-support, and the prognosis is grave.”
Do you agree that “YouTube is soaring towards the future like a pigeon towards a plate glass window.”? According to the story, “YouTube is adamant that ultimately they’ll find an advertising solution that will enable the ungainly behemoth to reach profitability.”
It’s a good thing that YouTube was bought by a benevolent landlord with the deepest of pockets, a company obviously willing to sustain losses while they figure out a viable monetization plan.
The article continues: “What are Google’s options? They seem unlikely to sustain a billion-dollar annual experiment with no path to revenue, no matter how much they paid for the original asset. In an organization feeling the sting of layoffs, is this really where Google wants to spend its money? It all depends.”
I just can’t see Google letting YouTube die. It’s the largest website on the planet and has massive brand recognition. Clearly it’s worth redesigning it, even if it means losing some goodwill and limiting what users can upload for free. They might also consider limits on how many hours you can watch for free each month.
As a marketer, I’d be happy to pay an annual fee for a Pro account, one of the options suggested in the article: “YouTube could implement a subscription structure for the site, either monetizing certain members-only content, or requiring users to create a paid account in order to contribute content. With so many marketers looking at YouTube as part of their viral strategy, this too could be a viable option.”
Despite YouTube’s current financial situation, it’s not affecting the traffic potential or the possibilities to rank well in Google universal search. In fact, with those benefits, I bet they’d find a lot of people willing to pay a subscription fee, or perhaps pay per upload. A Pro account would be a great answer, and I’d go for it—say $20 a year—that would be a great value. Sure we’d lose a lot of the kids, but they could stand to spend more time on homework anyway! 
What do you think? Let’s toss around options for making YouTube profitable.
FYI… Here are the most recent stats from comScore as of February 2009: YouTube remains the online video leader with 5.3 billion (yes, BILLION) video views in February, which is over 40% of the total videos viewed online across the Internet that month.
AND, according to comScore, while more than 145 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 90 videos per viewer in February, YouTube maintained its lead with nearly 100 million of those viewers watching 53.8 YouTube videos during the month. More importantly, those 100 million YouTube viewers represented 69 percent of those who watched online video.
This is not a fad, people. Video marketing is only going to increase as one of the most viable means to connect and even interact with your audience.
And right now, YouTube has the lion’s share of that audience—not to mention the SEO power to help marketers achieve stellar Google Universal Search (GUS) rankings easier than relying on traditional search engine optimization strategies on websites. (You knew it was coming…the plug): Which, of course, is exactly why you need to be using YouTube Secret Weapon. We help you get there…
Don’t forget, the price doubles next week on April 15. Stimulate your YouTube traffic now.