Winners and Losers in YouTube's $100M Original Channel Program
One of the bigger events in the online video industry this year was the rollout of new channels on YouTube, thanks to the site's $100 million original channel initiative. A panel convened at the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York City to look a the fledgling channels and see what's working (and what isn't).
One truth that quickly emerged was that experience trumped celebrity online. While several celebrities had created channels, it was the experienced YouTube personalities who were getting the most hits.
"You see this a lot with some of the YouTube original channels where lots of established entertainment and notable Hollywood celebrities and names who are coming over are coming over to the platform, are doing phenomenally poorly on it," explained Joshua Cohen, co-founder of Tubefilter. "It's the YouTubers, it's the people who have been on it for the past several years are the people who know how to engage in the community, who are doing incredibly well on these YouTube original channels. Like, Tony Hawk is the spokesperson for another channel, and his channel is not, despite Tony Hawk and despite all the credibility that that name may lend, his channel isn't doing quite as poorly as Amy Poehler's, but it's not doing well."
One of the initiative's strongest successes is SourceFed, an irreverent news show that offers several short videos each day. The channel was created by Philip DeFranco, who already enjoyed a large YouTube following.
"You have a native YouTuber like Phil DeFranco who has two-point-whatever million views, who's been on YouTube, was one of the first 10 actual YouTube partners to split in the advertising revenue. He knows how to do this," said Cohen. "He's been making a living out of this for literally the past 5 years. So when he gets some funding to create a new channel, it does way better than anyone else does. I think this is probably the top ones out of all the originals."
Watch the video below to view the entire panel discussion.
Handicapping and Reviewing YouTube's New Content Channels
Join TV critics, YouTube producers, and other experts to take a close look at the most interesting and prominent of the new YouTube channels. In this session these experts critique the channels, the content, headlines, tags, images, and metadata to provide insight as to how to improve these for your own work. Find out what's working, what's not, and what you can learn from it.
Speaker: John Evershed, Co-Founder, CEO, Mondo Media
Speaker: Joshua Cohen, Co-Founder, Tubefilter
Speaker: Paul Kontonis, VP,Group Director, Brand Content, Digitas
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