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YouTube – EMEA

Online video platform YouTube is looking for more partners to help it “write the next chapter in online video,” Ben McOwen Wilson, director of content partnerships for EMEA, told delegates at IHS’s recent Future of Digital Media Distribution conference in October.

The call for more partnerships comes on the back of the company’s recent push to partner up to 60 new original channels in Europe, announced at Mipcom. It follows YouTube’s US initiative a year ago and the launch of around 100 channel partnerships, backed by funding reportedly of more than US$100m.

McOwen Wilson says the platform is looking to prime new partnership channels to jump-start the market in Europe.

The partnership side to YouTube’s business has been growing steadily since the initiative was launched in December 2007, and now extends to one million partners in 27 countries, according to the company website. Its partners now range from a long list of well-known consumer-facing television brands, such as ABC, CBS, ESPN, Fox Sport, SPI and Warner Bros in the US and the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, delivering shortform and longform content in the shape of clips, previews, catch-up episodes, movie rentals and live sports events. The original channels initiative takes YouTube’s content mission to a whole new level.

However, it regards itself first and foremost as a platform, says McOwen Wilson, allaying any concern that the initiative suggests it is muscling into the conventional TV space. “It’s not about editorial control. Google is best when building platforms or buying search terms for their consumers, and it can do that at scale,” he says.

As the world’s second largest search engine, after its parent Google, YouTube now attracts around 800 million people and is localised in 43 countries and 60 languages. In 2011, it generated over a trillion views, while at least four billion hours of YouTube videos are now watched every month (up 50% on 2010), the equivalent of 40 minutes of viewing for every person on the planet, according to McOwen Wilson.

While those stats alone make it undeniably “part of the cultural fabric,” McOwen Wilson says YouTube is no longer just a video-sharing platform, although it’s not giving up on its UGC past. “It is a growing distribution platform for a wide array and variety of different content and has a huge range of partners who are growing their global audiences on our platform.”

And on the back of growing availability of broadband and greater bandwidth, YouTube’s growth is also fuelling a new phase in viewing. Domestic audiences are turning into global ones, with the web and web video now able to reach them at a fraction of the cost of broadcast TV, he notes.

“The web is going to take us from hundreds of channels to thousands, or potentially millions of channels, channel owners and channel brands,” says McOwen Wilson. “We’re no longer constrained by bandwidth, which means we can get access to a potentially unlimited array of niche channels.”

“What web video channels have in common is they are all super-serving a really clear audience. They’ve understood that the price of engagement is a loosening of control and embracing your fans. With access to global reach, these channels are able to aggregate audiences even around increasingly niche and small local content.”

That viewer aggregation potential is vividly underscored by YouTube’s live streaming of the record-breaking skydive by daredevil Felix Baumgartner, which generated YouTube’s largest-ever tally of live concurrent views online – more than eight million –  quiet apart from the millions who watched it after the event. YouTube’s previous live streaming record was around 500,000, says McOwen Wilson.

It’s also gaining pace at a local level. The latest findings of a consumer media survey by UK regulator Ofcom underscore the role YouTube now plays as a destination for TV shows. Among the top five in the UK were FremantleMedia’s Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor YouTube channels, both notching up at least a billion views by August this year, closely followed by the BBC’s YouTube channel.

YouTube’s biggest growth spurt of late has been in mobile traffic, which trebled in 2011. It now generates around one billion views daily worldwide to mobile devices, including tablets. “Today, on our platform, it’s around 25% globally, linked to the penetration of 3G networks,” says McOwen Wilson. Markets such as South Korea have already passed the tipping point, where over 50% of consumption is now mobile.

“There’s been the emergence of highly targeted, hugely engaging channels that recognise the power and liberation that web video gives; channels that set themselves up to be interactive, social and viewable whenever and wherever their viewers demand it,” says McOwen Wilson. “It’s no longer about if mobile will overtake fixed line, but when.

YouTube’s first wave of new European original content and channel partnerships are now underway, featuring heavyweight broadcast brands, independent prodcos and unknowns. Among the big names are BBC Worldwide, making original content for its YouTube channel On Earth; Endemol’s The Survival Guide for Parents; Zodiak Active and Bulls Eye’s Fast Furious and Funny automotive channel; All3Media’s Daily Mix and Body Talk Daily health and beauty channels; ITN’s citizen journalism channel Truthloader; and FremantleMedia’s two channels via its German production arm UFA, urban life net Heartbeat Berlin and crime channel Trigger. Earlier this year FremantleMedia launched its first original YouTube channel, The Pet Collective, under the US channels initiative.

“We’ve advance-funded channels, and we’re looking to get it back with conditions,” says McOwen Wilson. “But we don’t see ourselves needing to fund channels. In our vision of the future, there will be channels that become entirely self-sustaining, and never come through us having to fund them because they can build and grow their business sustainably.”

YouTube is also keen to invite more archive and library owners onboard as partners, says McOwen Wilson. “We’re working with partners looking to monetise their archives. It’s not just about new and original content we’ve funded but about working with a range of partners who are amplifying their message by using us, whether that’s some of the biggest TV brands, like Britain’s Got Talent, or people looking to find a global audience, outside and beyond their domestic audience.”

One example of the latter is Nigeria’s iROKOtv, which exports local and Nollywood cinema to a large African diaspora; or Irish pubcaster RTÉ and The Republic of Telly, “a very Irish comedy that has found a huge global audience,” he says.

Commenting on the revenue streams required to help make its channel partnerships sustainable, McOwen Wilson says YouTube’s TrueView in-stream ad system, launched in December 2010, is yielding encouraging results stateside.

TrueView allows viewers to skip an ad after a few seconds, which McOwen Wilson claims is delivering better returns to partners in the US, even taking into account the skipped ads. “Everybody wins. The advertisers only get charged for viewers who watch their ad, The viewers only watch ads that they like, which means they deepen their engagement with brands that generate revenues for our partners. And our partners make more regular content for our users, which means they have more opportunities and reasons to come back.”

But he concedes it’s still early days for the audience business in online video. “We’re seven years old and we’re learning every month and every week. We need the help of the creative industry in the UK, the help of the distribution industry in the UK, for longform content, shortform content, original content, archive and library content. Audiences come to YouTube. We want partners to come to YouTube.”

 

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