Pay attention: Earlier in the year YouTube announced that they would be entering into the paid subscription based market this year and have sense made great strides toward that goal. Experts believe that by the end of the week the first channels may become available.
These won’t simply be higher quality user generated content channels either, YouTube is partnering with a variety of different video producers including television studios to supply the content of each of the channels. YouTube’s new service will be similar to those offered by Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu.
What will set YouTube apart from the competition is that they will allow people to purchase up to 50 subscription channels individually with fees as low as $1.99 per month for each channel. This will allow customers to pick and choose exactly what types of shows they are interested and not have to pay for everything that they don’t want to see anyway.
YouTube continues to be an innovative arm of Google and with this additional revenue it is likely they will be adding significantly to the bottom line of Google’s overall numbers. This paid subscription option is on top of the advertisement supported channels which have become very popular across the YouTube platform. Many marketers are adding ads to their videos to supplement their income streams where YouTube and the video producer share the advertisement revenue.
What role advertisements will play in the new subscription based channels is yet to be seen, though it can be expected there will be limited, if any, advertisements initially. Most people, however, will accept advertisements being displayed between shows or on the side bars while watching videos online so this may be yet another opportunity for YouTube to partner with content creators to bring people the high quality entertainment they want.
YouTube continues to be a powerful tool which is used by marketers around the world, and that is not expected to change at all. Even with these paid subscription services available through YouTube most people will continue to use the site as they always have, to find or share the great user generated content everyone loves.
Using YouTube as a revenue generating site for marketers will continue to have huge potential as the number of monthly visitors continues to grow. In March of 2013 YouTube surpassed the one billion unique monthly users mark, which is an incredible number that should be very encouraging to all marketers using this platform. I believe that having this premium service will actually help to bring in new people to the free side of YouTube as well which opens up new opportunities.
Do you think YouTube can be successful in the premium channel market? They are getting in quite late compared with Hulu, Amazon and Netflix so it may be hard to steal away customers. What do you think about selling How-To Videos and other services via this method? Is this a CPA Network Goal? Then again, backed by Google it is possible they will shoot to the top of the streaming premium video market quite quickly! Share your thoughts on this big move by YouTube!
