YouTube: We’re Spending $200 Million on Professional Videos
Posted by aonenetworks On August 2, 2012
A while back, YouTube spent around $150 million on its search for talent. Now, with an additional $200 million, the company plans to “effectively target their audience” .
The Google-owned video website will be using the money to market over 100 channels of professional videos. The money they have spent so far on the project is expected to come back to the company in profit in the next year, which will help cover the large startup costs of creating the professional videos in the first place.
The first $150 million spent YouTube is calling “experiment money,” and it has been spent tracking down and hiring many famous stars, such as Rainn Wilson of “The Office”. There are many lesser-known actors showing up in the content as well.
This means big changes for YouTube. In the past, the company has relied on user-posted videos to build the business up. When these videos went viral or were frequently watched, ad revenue alone resulted in thousands of dollars a day for the video company. However, since Google has purchased the company, they have been looking for new, entertaining ways to generate more profit. After months of deliberation, original programming was the solution the company came up with.
Still, user-generated content seems to be making the company tons of money as it stands. In January of this year, YouTube announced that people were watching over 4 billion videos on the site each and every day, up from 3 billion six months before.
