Video stars
Video sharing site YouTube seems unstoppable in the current climate. Pete Cashmore reports that the site is delivering up to one million videos a day.
Sceptics have pointed at the YouTube business model, with their lack of advertising, as a prime example of the lack of solid business planning among Web 2.0 startups. How, they wonder, will this site turn users into dollars? Last week, I spoke to Yoav Arnstein, who leads the internet advertising agency Eyecatcher, who thinks the company could have a great future ahead of it. “YouTube has really got itself ready for advertising. With a lot of Web 2.0 startups, brand advertisers won’t touch them because they are scared of appearing next to content that might be illegal or crass. You go to a company like BMW and ask them for money for a consumer-media project and first of all they aren’t interested. But YouTube has really thought ahead. They have removed a lot of the copyrighted content. They put a clear distinction between the things that are suitable for adults and the things for a general audience. Last week they ran advertising for the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. No one knows how much they paid for it, but it shows that the tide is turning from the very fact that Hollywood was able to contemplate such a deal.”
Whether this will be enough to attract image-conscious brands remains to be seen. But brands such as Volkswagen are already submitting their advertisements to the site, and in an era when companies like Chrysler and Coca Cola are asking for users to help generate their advertising, how long will it be before the site becomes an unmissable part of every company’s media mix?
Update 22/7: [from mashable] YouTube is now the world’s fastest growing website, with traffic increasing by 75% last week. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the site grew from 7.3 million to 12.8 million unique visitors – what’s more, traffic is up 297% since January.
