A very recent AdWeek article (YouTube Stars Represent Massive Media Shift) alerted me to an oped piece by Hank Green (Vlogbrothers, VidCon, etc.). It’s titled “Lessons Learned From YouTube’s $300 Million Hole.” Hank observes the success rate of the YouTube creator grants, and how most of the channels failed. Go read it.
What do you think? Do any of the new channels strike you as being successful? Hank mentions SourceFed.
I don’t know anything at all about any of this. I think I used to, back in Revver’s day, but now I work my job, come home and socialize with my Facebook friends, make a few posts there and go to bed. I forgot which closet I put my TV in. Once in a while I’ll rediscover that quaint machine looking for socks, wondering why I wasted so much of my youth on that thing. So now Youtube is trying to be another TV station? Pffft. So what? It’s a rarely used resource for me, my free Cloud storage location.
Best wishes to them. It’d be funny as hell if they bought NBC.
From what I have read, usually, most youtube viewers don’t want to be engaged into anything longer than 3-4 minutes. And even that is a generous estimate. Also most youtube viewers bounce within the first 30 seconds of watching any video. So those first seconds have got to be really good in order to keep the audience there. And then the next 15-30 seconds has to build up to something really big and then KABOOM! And they’re ROTFLing and that’s a good video. A good online video. Not a TV episode. No, that is not at all like TV. Online videos are a completely different animal altogether.
I agree with Hank’s sentiments. I still wonder how many of the people who are making decisions about YouTube really understand what YouTube is and where the true potential lies.
I wish I could have gotten a grant.
Also agree with Hank’s points. It goes to show that proper YouTube audience development and optimization can trump celebrity star power.
Of the YouTube funded channels the ones that really stick out for me are:
The Nerdist Channel
The Onion
The Pet Collective
Geek & Sundry
Good find on the Hank article. I wouldn’t have seen that otherwise.