GooTube Signs More Deals; Viacom NBC Get Lonelier

The BBC, the NBA, the Sundance Channel, the "hundreds" of small media partners who sign up every quarter... GooTube is quietly partnering with almost all of the old media world that hasn't been scarfed up by Viacom or NBC.  According to the New York Times, moreover, when 100,000 Viacom videos were stripped off YouTube a few weeks ago, and some commentators suggested that the loss of these massively trafficked clips would force the arrogant little arriviste to beg and plead, YouTube traffic increased 14% in two weeks.

The bottom line: YouTube does not need Viacom or NBC.  For the moment, Viacom and NBC can tell themselves that they do not need YouTube.  In another year or two, however, when every other content producer on the planet has set up a dedicated "channel" on YouTube, it will be the stubborn old media conglomerates' turn to say "please."

Comments

[John Binzatch]

It sounds like its your typical market right now.

The stations that are more desperate to get their programs out there are cutting deals and the ones that dont need to deal are waiting.

But ultiamtely i cant see how it would hurt NBC CBS to have a channel with a few clips, previews etc. and give Goog a bit of ad revenue. I really dont see why though they would give away full back episodes though etc. If someone wants to watch a full length episode i dont see why they would not be willing to go to an NBC site.

Im a google bear and i buy puts monthly on the stock. But i think the youtube deal will be a success. I just think it will be more of a modest success than some of the most optimistic people.

[Joe Garland]

The BBC has signed on. It probably qualifies as the "more desperate."

[John Biznatch]

BBC is easy to find in the United States on cable. Everybody is watching it.

[John Biznatch]

and the old rule when you got nothing to say find a grammar mistake.

[Victor]

I think you're on the money with this one Henry, but where did that 14% number come from?

[dude]

I'm sure every media company on earth just loves the idea of Google controlling their entire business in the future.

How stupid do you have to be to think that in the future there will be only one TV channel, and it will be YouTube?

Pretty dumb, or at least pretty long Google calls or shares.

[Neal S. Lachman]

It is great to point out who HAS signed on with GooYube, but the majority DOESN'T. Having 1% of the total content producing industry as a partner doesn't represent power or clout.

I still thinkt that Google should be more accomodating to create a better environment for the old media guys to come to (win/win) terms.

[john]

Viacom was bragging that their own traffic increased 50% after they pulled their videos from youtube.
An increase of 50% from 1000 view or 10000 view is nothing to brag about compared to millions of view on youtube. How many more views would they have gotten if they had stay at youtube ?

I understand that viacom will get premium for their own site; but, google is sharing 70% of its revenue from ads according to their latest filing.

[Jeff]

As I said earlier, Viacom walking away from YouTube represents, if anything, only the end of the beginning. While these latest YouTube deals -- BBC, NBA, etc -- only 1% (probably much less) of the content world, it is early yet for YouTube.

None of this will lead to a single Internet TV channel. That won't be YouTube or anyone else. Again, online does not work like offline. Online, you don't have to go to NBC to watch NBC programs. You can go to NBC, but there are and will be many other choices -- YouTube, blogs, BitTorrent, other P2P, other websites posting (even temporarily). And the more to come in the future. It's a different distribution channel with different properties, and business models.

It's not about YouTube being more accomodating. It's about media companies evolving their own business models.

[lars.mouritzen]

There is a really interesting – almost startling – lesson about Google’s long term prospects to be gleaned from the youTube content strategy. It hints at a serious deficiency in the Google business model. By buying youTubes, Google is sending a strong signal that it sees trouble ahead,

This is a subtle but really important point. Apologies for the length of this post, but I think it is worth spelling out.

The recent content deals are youTube’s recognition that to capture our attention in the online video space, they will have to do it the old media way – by making sure that there is good content available, and so complementing the UGC with professionally created media.

Now, contrast that with how Google makes its money.

Google’s core business is to make money by capturing consumer attention and then selling that attention to advertisers. In that sense, it is no different from NBC, CBS or any TV network. Like these organisations, Google wins if it can capture lots of consumer attention and be very effective at monetising that attention through ad sales. Equally, if Google does not capture the attention, it can’t monetise it.

Google's genius lies in its ability to deal with the fragmentation of consumer attention. Unlike TV, where we cluster together around a fixed number of programmes, our collective online attention is literally fragmented across billions of web pages. Yet Google can capture each individual micro-fragment of attention, and as if that was not enough, it can find precisely the advertiser who is willing to pay the most for that micro-fragment of consumer attention.

Critically, in this business model, Google does not have to own, produce or aggregate the content in order to aggregate the audience attention.

So it is rather startling that Google has found it necessary to purchase youTube which is precisely a vehicle for aggregating content – the one thing that Google does not need in its core business model.

What is that telling us about how Google itself views its own ability long term to capture online consumer attention as that attention shifts to audio and video?

First of all, it is worth remembering that the web 1.0 world and even most of the web 2.0 world consists of text files (the online equivalent of news, magazine and book pages). Search engines are great for navigating that world. In fact, its what they were built for.

However, at some point not too far in the future, the web will offer additional billions of minutes of Television, Film, Music and other rich media, and our total balance of consumption will shift away from ‘mainly text and text services like e-mail’ to a more balanced mix of text, audio and video. How much time will we spend online on audio and video? In the off-line world, we spend 5-10 times as much time consuming TV and music as we do on reading.

If we spend relatively more time on the web consuming audio and video, we will spend more time navigating audio and video. And search engines have a real problem navigating this realm.

Why? This is over- simplifying but search engines search on words. A digital video file is a bunch of instructions for arranging pixels on a screen. Not that helpful for a search engine. User generated metadata (tags etc.) is a way of adding words to the video or audio so search engines can search on it, but this is unlikely to provide the answer for billions upon billions of minutes of clips.

Two other options for navigation exist.

One is to leverage human recommendation, for example in social networks. We would find media by relying on friends in our network – as they find stuff, they recommend it to us. Social networks are already becoming vehicles for launching new content.

The second option is automated recommendation, based on transactions. This is how you navigate Amazon or iTunes – people who bought this also like this. It is instructive how many people don’t use search engines once they get to large content collections like iTunes or Amazon.

Both these options have proven to be highly effective in offering good navigation. The existence of the long tail proves the point.

These are the challengers to Google. Much like CBS, NBC and CBS have been slugging it out for ratings over the decades, we will see a big battle in the future between search engines, social networks and recommendation engines to capture consumer attention.

What is already clear is that Google will have a much bigger fight on its hands when consumption of audio and video becomes a bigger attention grabber online. It will lose some share of consumer attention to the new contenders, and consequently will not be able to monetise that attention.

Google recognises the problem and has in effect signalled this fact by buying youTubes.

[Victor]

Time to kiss and make up with YouTube:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/28/commentary/mediabiz/index.htm?postversion=2007022812

[Robert]

Lars,
What would you say if Google did nothing in
the video space.
Google, Inc., from their search revenues can and will
enter many areas of the internet. They have the money,
the power, the imagination to enter the map space,
the e-mail space, the blog space, the spreadsheet space,
and now the video space. All these areas will not be
profitable, but Google understands that they cannot stand
still.
Maybe you will be wrong. Maybe Google will be wrong.
But, as Henry wrote a few months ago, YouTube the investment is
but 1 (one) % of their net worth.
Please see the companies that did not adapt and did not see the
next new thing coming: Xerox, Wang Labs, Kodak, and
to a large extent----Microsoft.

[Devilina]

I agree with Henry Boldket, the real digital revolution is upon us.

You tube is the space ship fuelled by the next generation.

Since when did a revolution ask if it could "please take the reigns and then take over"

[akenna]

thenks
sohbet

[batteries]

toshiba satellite p25 battery