Saturday, July 16, 2011

YouTube.com planning to sell web series for $3.5 Million?

        As Professor Kagan mentioned in class, Youtube is one of the most visited site on the web. Youtube.com has been trying to monetize their site for a while and their latest idea to do so is to sell a web series. The idea is basically that they will "YouTube has pitched advertisers on funding big-budget web shows featuring stars like Kobe Bryant, Lady Gaga and "Dancing with the Stars" host Brooke Burke, asking millions of dollars to make them happen. The pitches are part of YouTube's foray into Hollywood for polished, TV-style web video that can attract the kind of advertisers that devote most of their ad budgets on TV." (http://www.adage.com/)
       The reasoning behind this is to create a concept that will combine fun for the audience as well as convey an advertising message. This will include highly paid stars to star in the video series in order to connect to the audience. "The celebrity shows that YouTube recently proposed to advertisers -- so-called YouTube Originals -- would make the video site, best known for user-generated content and music videos, look more like a traditional TV network than ever before, according to pitch documents obtained by Advertising Age."(http://www.adage.com/) The celebrities that have been pitched to so far include Lady Gaga and Kobe Bryant. Should this come through, it will revolutionize the way Youtube sells advertising spots and will begin to compete in the higher stakes. If they manage to get this amount, they will be changing the economics of online video.

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