In the next few days we will launch the ability to measure the outcome of a YouTube action by asking your Shareholders to subscribe and interact with a video or channel. All of these actions can be rewarded, and no Eaves will be paid to them until they click the buttons you want them to. Most of this will be accomplished right on the Mission's page itself. For Missions participants - you will also benefit, as the creators can be more confident in what the return will be; meaning that they will probably put up more Eaves (hint, hint) and thus, we hope, it will create a better experience for everyone.
I was lucky enough to be in the crowd last week at CES when YouTube's Robert Kyncl, VP of global content, gave some great stats and introduced a panel discussion talking to the new channel strategy of YouTube-sponsored content coming over the next few months. Creative folks like Felicia Day & Anthony Zuiker are just a couple of the great content creators who will have channels on YouTube soon. The drive behind Robert's chat was that good, relevant content in a niche is where YouTube can excel in gaining a global reach. In addition and probably more relevant for YouTube, they can excel in reaching these niches for the global advertising dollar.
Some of the stats Robert talked to were pretty astonishing; my three favourites were:
By 2015, 90% of all internet traffic will be video.
YouTube streams 3 Billion hours of video a month; that is 30 minutes of video for every man, woman and child on the planet. Wow!
Michelle Phan, a cosmetics video blogger on YouTube, has more views than Style Channel per episode, not just by a short margin either. 750k for Style Channel, 1.5m on average for Phan. Boom, marketing to a niche! Phan is now one of the faces for Loreal.
I was talking with some friends after the keynote and their opinions of Michelle and others like her were interesting. While they did not disregard her amazing growth and great relevant content for a niche, the conversation theme surrounded Phan was lucky to be in the right place at the right time when YouTube was booming, and therefore there was a great symbiotic relationship occurring with content drivers in niches. As the conversation showed, if Michelle had launched her channel in 2012 she may not have gained the traffic and subscribers that she has now. It is becoming more difficult to drive people to your content and engage them just because of the sheer amount of content that is now on YouTube.
Missions have proven incredibly powerful for driving engagement with online content, and this is just one way we're improving the feature. This release will be the first of a few that we will release over the coming weeks with a similar theme, i.e. giving the creator traceability and help them to better engage people in their content.
