Back in October 2006, a few days before Google acquired YouTube, I wrote a post called YouTube is wildy profitable, no doubts about it, it was probably the first I published on this blog that got a lot of attention. Anyway, I had no proof that YouTube was actually profitable or for that matter generating material revenues, but the point was: it could be in a very strong state despite the alleged hosting fees, which we now know through peering arrangements can be contained.
However, with Viacom and Google disclosing numerous documents, it turns out, that while not profitable (after all expenses), YouTube was indeed generating revenues which covered most of their expenses as early as August 2006. You knew that if Google was willing to pay $1.65B for a company that was 18 months old, it wasn’t doing so simply for the promise, but still, that is quite impressive. I guess what Steve Chen and Chad Hurley knew then was that at that pace, YouTube’s growth would ensure that its costs would far exceed its revenues in the short term, and a sale to Google would make that concern evaporate. continue reading...
Viacom and YouTube disclose a whole lot of documents. To summarize:
- Viacom says that YouTube is essentially “Napster in Video” and the precedent is for them to be shut down. continue reading...
We’re big fans of TubeMogul’s hyper-distribution and analytics offerings, but I always wondered if YouTube’s utter domination of online video would make their offerings a bit less “must-have-ish”. Apparently (I’ve sort of known this for a while but Brett @ TubeMogul would have killed me if I said anything) they have another, more lucrative business: advertising.
This certainly does make TubeMogul’s appeal stronger, I’d listed them in one of the top 10 potential M&As in online video (with the would be buyer being Nielsen) and this ad play only adds to their potential exit scenarios. continue reading...
Unbelievably, YouTube is only five years old, but it is the undisputed king of online video, accounting for nearly 40% of the 33 billion monthly streams that are generated each month in the US. continue reading...
I’ve previously written about VCs draconian terms and how they miss the boat with their crazy investing strategy which leaves more carnage than successes. Today, Tech Crunch published my fifth article in a month, entitled Where Did VCs Go Wrong In Online Video? continue reading...
Last week, Tech Crunch published my article on The 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising, in it, I mentioned that while YouTube has been closed to most technology and ad solutions, surprisingly, it was more open than some of their peers by allowing producer partners to sell ads. continue reading...
Hermoine and Alex declare their love and fight to get married. I’m 99.9% sure this is a joke, but you can never be too certain these days… continue reading...
One week, two articles on Tech Crunch? Must have been a busy and productive week. Oh, wait, it was. We crossed 100,000,000 streams last month, announced it this week, and Tech Crunch published two articles:
- the first one was a general state of the online video advertising industry,
- today, read about 12 surprises after all these years. continue reading...
YouTube is looking for suggestions, mainly from users on its user interface and experience. I’ll let the millions, and millions of users do that.
What I’d like to see is an interface for Premium Producer Partners like WatchMojo.com to be able to enter a demographic: continue reading...
The following 8-video Decade Rewind 2000s series is a pretty impressive display of creativity and execution from the WatchMojo.com team, a 2000s decade recap and review where we rewind the events of the past 10 years in the Auto industry, Business & Technology, Entertainment, Fashion, Music, Politics, Science & Space and Video Games. continue reading...
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