YouTube is one of the most successful brands on the Internet. But did you know it's still bleeding money?

When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, everyone was well-aware that the company was unprofitable. In fact, some had speculated that the reason YouTube originally sold out was because they couldn't raise the massive amounts of capital required to power the servers and pay for its bandwidth bill. But many people simply assumed, given the product's continued success and the gradual acceptance of video advertising that it would eventually become profitable.

Not so. Though more recent numbers are scarce, a few years ago Credit Suisse issued a YouTube profitability analysis that was summarized and appended by Benjamin Wayne, the CEO of Fliqz. Among the more jarring notes:

YouTube will manage to rake in about $240 million in ad revenue in 2009, against operating costs of roughly $711 million, leading to a shortfall of just over $470 million.

and

Assuming YouTube delivers the 75 billion streams that Credit Suisse projects for 2009, and assuming YouTube manages to slot an ad for every stream (which is practically speaking, impossible, given the nature of much of their content), YouTube would have to achieve a $9.48 CPM for every video impression shown. Presumably, the videos YouTube is already monetizing represent the best content available, with diminishing returns as they reach deeper and deeper into a repository rife with copyright violation, the indecent, the uninteresting, and the unwatchable. Hulu claims to be charging a $30 CPM, of which roughly 70% goes to the copyright holder. Averages for other proprietary content hover around the $10 CPM mark.

It will be interesting to watch this shake out...