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 —Google had 1M advertisers in '07: So while that secret is out, you can only guess how many more advertisers Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has now. UBS analyst Ben Schachter speculates the search giant has between 1.3 million and 1.5 million advertisers at this point. Citing an SEC regulatory filing, NYT reported that Google said it had 1 million advertisers as of 2007. The numbers have grown steadily: from 89,000 in 2003, to 201,000 in 2004, 360,000 in 2005 and 600,000 in 2006. But what hasn't changed is is how much advertisers on Google have spent on average, which is just above $16,000 a year on Google, roughly the same as five years ago.
—Will delete Facebook friends for (fast) food: If you've got too many Facebook friends—people you've probably never even spoken to—but haven't had cause to delete them, Burger King has an impetus to clean out your list. Much in the same odd vein as its four-year-old Subservient Chicken web spot, Burger King will offer Facebook members a coupon for a free burger if they delete 10 friends. Only one coupon per user account, though.
—Despite the down economy, ad effectiveness is up: That's the Online Publishers Association's interpretation of a Dynamic Logic MarketNorms report (PDF). For example, since the first report in July, brand awareness on OPA member sites rose 38 percent, while scores on ad networks have declined 19 percent. Also, brand favorability scores for OPA member sites have risen 27 percent, while ad networks, portals and MarketNorms have dropped 29 percent, 17 percent and 6 percent respectively.
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Their fortunes are poles apart and yet inseparable—one is hauling in buckets of advertising, the other losing it at an alarming rate. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) sympathizes with the newspaper business' predicament and continues to say it can help, but, sadly for NYT-Google acquisition speculators, CEO Eric Schmidt says he isn't about to buy or bail out any news publishers.
Schmidt tells Fortune: "The good news is we could purchase them (newspapers). We have the cash. But I don't think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems. I think the solution is tighter integration. In other words, we can do this without making an acquisition. The term I've been using is 'merge without merging'. The web allows you to do that, where you can get the web systems of both organizations fairly well integrated, and you don't have to do it on an exclusive basis."
Schmidt also rules out investing in newspapers and, though he's concerned enough about "companies that are in a terrible business situation who support an important public good" to advocate models like Sandler Foundation-funded ProPublica, there'll be no parachute payments through anything like the benevolent Google.org fund: "We didn't want to co-mingle philanthropy with business. We are in the advertising business."
Google is tip-toeing on precarious ground. Having built a successful business of its own, it has no real obligation to help out ailing newspapers, but the chasm between their contrasting fortunes, and the suggestion that Google is making some of its money from the very content news publishers generate, is prompting some to wonder if Google doesn't have some kind of moral duty to help. Schmidt, though, is advocating the same kind of relationship that Google has operated to date ("We'd like to help them better monetize their customer base, we have tools that make that easier"). But Belgian newspapers have already taken Google to court and won over indexing of their stories. If the gulf between the two widens further in lieu of additional support from Google, some publishers may yet wonder if they're really getting sufficient upside.
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 It's official. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has won the deal to become the default search provider on all phones on the Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) network, reports Reuters. The two companies said they would go into greater detail about the deal later today at CES in Las Vegas. In November last year, the WSJ reported that in an effort to snatch the deal from Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft was offering guaranteed payments to the carrier of approximately $550 million to $650 million over five years—about twice what the search giant had proposed. The payments are to come from the ads that Microsoft would be able to serve up with search results.
But as my colleague Tricia Duryee reported earlier on mocoNews.net, the deal needs to be looked at as a strategic one, as the payments—said to be seriously inflated—don't make economic sense. In order for Microsoft to guarantee the numbers floated, each Verizon Wireless subscriber would have to conduct at least 17 searches a month, which Citi analyst Mark Mahaney said in an analysis was an "aggressive" assumption. The trouble, of course, is when users start going off-portal and deciding themselves which search engine they'd like to use. In that case, Google which already has a dominant share of mobile search will most likely continue its momentum. This is Microsoft's first mobile search deal in the US. Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is the search provider for AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile, while Google powers Sprint's search.
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 —Tanking job market a boon for LinkedIn: While LinkedIn laid off some 10 percent of its staff in November, the financial crisis hasn't been all bad for the business-focused social network, USA Today reports. It has seen increases in performance stats like page views (up 9 percent), invitations sent (up 10 percent), connections (up 11 percent) and member recommendations (up 14 percent) since September 2008, as more people use the site to post resumes and find out about job opportunities. CEO Reid Hoffman (who took the post back from Dan Nye last month) told the paper that the increased usage will help LinkedIn lure ad dollars away from competitors like MySpace and Facebook, and that he expects the trend to continue given the state of the job market.
—Nickelodeon rolls out "kid's choice" site UPickDaily: Viacom's Nickelodeon launched UPickDaily, a pop-culture site where kids can post and vote on their favorite TV shows, movies, music, games and other content. The beta site features polls and quizzes on topics from "what wild animal would you want to be" to "what's your favorite Wii game so far," and Reuters says the content is moderated. There are display ads alongside the top and right side of the page (though that could change as the site evolves). If handled appropriately in terms of kids' privacy guidelines, there could be a data-mining component reminiscent of Nielsen's now defunct "Hey! Nielsen" social net/market research project.
—Broadway finds friends through social media: Broadway show producers are increasingly using social media to attract new fans, per the NYT. New musical "In the Heights," for example, has a MySpace page with a blog, widgets and a jukebox that plays songs and videos from the show. The show even launched a related YouTube series called "Legally Brown," where Broadway stars competed for a role in an upcoming performance. (It was a twist on MTV's "Legally Blonde," a reality show in which actresses competed for the lead role in the musical of the same name. Meanwhile, "Shrek the Musical" has Shrekster—its own social network—with profiles of the show's characters and breaking "news" from the fictional kingdom of Duloc.
Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
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It's not surprising that during a downturn, the clear metrics and ROI offered by performance based ads are looking more attractive. But in his wide-ranging '09 outlook, JP Morgan analyst Imran Khans expects marketers to treasure performance-based ads even when the larger economy begins to grow again. So the market share gains performance ad have achieved over the CPM-based look pretty durable and mean continued struggles for display ads.
The report, Nothing But Net: Outlook for Global Internet Stocks in 2009 (PDF), predicts that the mostly performance-based U.S. search ad market will rise 10 percent in 2009 to nearly $16 billion. In contrast, display ads, which includes both performance and branded advertising, will grow only 6.3 percent to $8.4 billion this year.
—Bearish online video: Khan expects the accelerated shift to performance ads having a dampening effect on the growth of online video ads. Even in a series of downward revisions, online video ad growth still seemed poised for healthy gains this year. For example, at the end of November, eMarketer forecast online video growth of 44.9 percent, which was still nearly half of the 81 percent growth rate the researcher predicted for 2008. Khan believes that online video is headed for a considerable slowdown because one, it's still reliant on the CPM model, as opposed to performance-based measurements like cost-per-click or cost-per-action based display. And unlike television, which still can count on advertisers to respond to CPMs, online video can't guarantee viewership for any specific video the way TV does in the upfront model. Plus, considering the unpredictability of popular videos, they uneven quality and the continued battles over copyright, JP Morgan doesn't expect online video to have great prospects for the next few years. However, Khan is intrigued by Google's experiments with an e-commerce platform—i.e, performance-based model—for YouTube videos. For example, if a user watches a a song featured in a music
video, they can click on a link that lets them buy music directly Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and iTunes, with YouTube getting a cut of the revenue. More after the jump —Social nets need new approach: Looking at the projected slump in online ad sales for sites like Facebook and MySpace, JP Morgan strongly advises that online communities look for sources other than display for revenue. In particular, the report offers a few possible routes to profitability, including greater use of cost-per-action ads, lead gen, sales of virtual items, connecting to classifieds or e-commerce sites, and charging for premium membership, as LinkedIn and Classmates do.
—Mobile looks good long-term: But as for the near-term, the long-awaited explosion for mobile ads will simply have to wait for a better economic environment—not to mention better phones and technology, Khan says. although mobile phone penetration is high at 84 percent in the U.S., , the mobile search market is in the early adoption stage. In Q108, only 15.6 percent of wireless subs were using mobile web, according to Nielsen Mobile data. Even within this small subset of mobile internet users, usage drastically trails that on PCs. Nielsen Online says that a PC online user visits more than 100 domains per month, whereas mobile web users visit 6.4 individual sites per month, on average.
—M&As start slow, but gather steam in H209: With last year's total deal count down by 20 percent, according to a report last week from DeSilva + Phillips (disclosure: one of our sponsors), JP Morgan anticipates continued coolness in the acquisitions area for at least the first six months of 2009. But things are likely to heat up in the second half of the year, assuming the economy begins to stabilize.
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—Departing Time exec's online/offline disappointment: Ed McCarrick, who leaves Time magazine after 35 years this week to go to Omnicom barter unit Icon International, tells AdAge's Nat Ives that one of his biggest disappointments was not being able to change advertisers' habits about selling beyond the paid subscription. Two years ago, McCarrick began trying to convince marketers and agencies to buy against the entire audience across print, digital and mobile. But "when you go in and have conversations, 99.9% of the time, with an agency—or even a client, for that matter—you talk about audience primarily. I don't think that's changed."
—YouTube tries to cure pharma marketers' "Excedrin Headache": YouTube's sponsored contests are pretty run of the mill at this point. But the Google-owned video channel hopes its Excedrin video challenge promoting the painkiller's curative speed this fall will open the doors to a marketing category that's remained averse to YouTube ads: big pharma. YouTube is trying to use the campaign—emphasizing Excedrin's control on the placements—as proof that being surrounded by user-gen won't cause the heavily-regulated drug makers any huge headaches (pardon the pun).
—Publishers Clearing House hopes to win digital sweepstakes: Speaking of contests, Publishers Clearing House has parked the Prize Patrol Van with its over-sized checks. Instead it is taking its sweepstakes to Twitter, the iPhone, MySpace and Facebook, offering prizes ranging from $100 to $2,500. Realizing that many younger consumers might not even know what PCH is, the company has bought time on MTV's The Real World to promote the digital contests. Still, the gambit is long on hope, short on strategy. As Alex Betancur, VP/GM of the PCH Online Network concedes: "The truth of the matter is, we have no idea how we would make money on Twitter."
—You can judge a company by its website: When consumers were asked how they define a company's brand, they say it's the entity's web presence that provides the best look. An unpublished survey by brand consultant MS&L and audience researcher GfK Roper surveyed 6,000 consumers in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Sweden and China on the issue found that U.S. individuals were most likely to consider a company's website when making a determination about a company's values.
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About those plans YouTube has to show the music labels who has the upper hand, think of it like a poker game: when you're not the only game in town, it makes it easier for players to walk away from the table. Conversely, when you think your game is the only game in town that matters, you're not going to fold just keep them playing. That's why when a YouTube user tries to watch My Chemical Romance's Teenagers today, the legit versions won't be available. Ditto for user-gen content. That goes for all of the content once licensed by Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) to YouTube. WMG was the first major in when the site needed legitimacy with the music industry and Warner wanted to show it was adapting to digital. Now that actually making money is the bigger issue, WMG is the first of the major labels to pull out following the expiration of its deal and the failure to come to terms on a new version. I'm told it was WMG's decision to leave; Peter Kafka was told by a source it was Google's decision. Maybe it's just MAD—mutually assured destruction.
YouTube drew first blood on its company blog, listing its many efforts to accommodate the music industry: "despite our constant efforts, it isn't always possible to maintain these innovative agreements. Sometimes, if we can't reach acceptable business terms, we must part ways with successful partners. For example, you may notice videos that contain music owned by Warner Music Group being blocked from the site. Don't worry - if you receive a takedown notification, you will have a couple of options to choose from in order to keep your original video creations up. Check out Audioswap, a one-of-a-kind library of pre-cleared music ready for you to drop into your videos any time."
WMG's statement: "We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists' content to the site. Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide."
Both sides think they have the winning hand. YouTube has a massive audience that won't take kindly to takedown notices and lack of access. WMG's music video is widely available through MySpace Music (it holds equity in the News Corp (NYSE: NWS) JV), Hulu, etc., as is licensing for user-generated content. Fans will have to go elsewhere while WMG resumes takedown whack-a-mole at YouTube, at least, that's what WMG is counting on.
It all conjures visions of NBC Universal's decision to walk away from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and iTunes last year. Whatever you think of the strategy and whether the resolution was a win for NBCU, it's the kind of move someone can afford to take when the pot is small. Will the others follow?
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During the second session at our L.A. Year-End Digital Media Review and Mixer, our founder, publisher and editor Rafat Ali led a panel with Albert Cheng, EVP of digital media for Disney-ABC Television Group; Miles Beckett, co-founder and CEO of EQAL and co-creator and executive producer of lonelygirl15 and KateModern; and Lewis Henderson, SVP - head of digital for William Morris Agency. Among the topics they covered were plans for 2009, indie content developers and those online video giants called YouTube and Hulu. Find out what Cheng had to say when he admitted ABC was not on either YouTube or Hulu and Rafat asked, point blank, "Why?" The video is embedded below. Meanwhile, be sure to watch our video of Arianna Huffington's Q&A with Ashton Kutcher. (RSS readers will have to click through..)
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Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
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Record labels like Universal Music Group are using YouTube to rake in millions of dollars from their music videos, and yesterday we raised the question of whether Google was making much money from these deals. Well, sources tell MediaMemo's Peter Kafka that the answer is a big, fat no. In fact, the music clips are costing Google (NSDQ: GOOG) money, even though YouTube is running ads on them.
But that is about to change, Kafka says. Currently, YouTube pays the labels either a per-stream fee or a portion of the ad revenue (if there's an ad on the video) every time a user clicks on one of their music clips; but since YouTube hasn't saturated the site with ads (yet), most of the time it's stuck with the per-stream fee. YouTube is in the midst of negotiating new deals with the labels (UMG, EMI, Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Warner Music Group) on very different terms, and Kafka's sources say the new terms will not add nearly as much cash to the labels' coffers. The current deals expire over the course of 2009.
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 —SNL's Samberg chooses YouTube: With nearly 9 million views since being posted December 6, Andy Samberg's "Jizz in My Pants" is the most watched clip on YouTube this month. More noteworthy is that viewers have been able to access the music video-style Saturday Night Live skit on YouTube at all. NBC is meticulous about keeping unauthorized clips off the site in favor of its own video properties, but since Samberg and his production company The Lonely Island own the rights to the clip, they chose to serve it to YouTube's larger audience. CNET says Samberg's decision "raised some eyebrows," but that it makes sense because he's trying to expose the skit to the widest possible audience. While NBC.com and Hulu have reach, neither site can top YouTube in terms of mass appeal. Samberg also has a record deal with Universal Music Group in the works, and given YouTube's success in terms of music promotion, building a loyal fan base on the site is a no-brainer.
—People like streaming video at work: Now there's a shock ... Nielsen Online's latest VideoCensus report found that, in October, 65 percent of online video viewers watched at least one clip from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a weekday, the most popular daypart for streaming. Nearly all of those work-week streamers had broadband access, a likely factor contributing to their consumption. The second most popular daypart was weekends 6 a.m. - 8 p.m., with 51 percent of viewers watching at least one clip. 49 percent of people streamed video on weeknights from 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.; while just 43 percent of viewers watched Web clips during TV's traditional primetime: 8 p.m. - 11 p.m. Release.
—Machinima.com hooks writers in for 15 new shows: Online gaming site Machinima.com got $3.85 million in funding in November, and it will be using some of that cash to develop 15 new shows. Kotaku says writers from TV shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of Queens and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air have signed on to craft scripts for the shorts, which will be part of "The Machinima Comedy Lab." No date has been set for the first pilot.
More after the jump. —Current and Rotten partner in series: And another original series play ... Al Gore-backed media company Current will partner with IGN's Rotten Tomatoes to launch a weekly show that digs into the latest movie news. NewTeeVee says the show will incorporate the crowd-sourced reviews and commentary that Rotten Tomatoes has become known for, though no word yet on when it will launch.
—NBC, CBS attract ad dollars with original Web series: Develop original online series or push existing shows to the Web? That's just one of the questions the tanking economy is forcing broadcast networks to ask themselves, according to TV Week. But a steady stream of ad dollars has made the original content route a lucrative one for NBC and CBS (NYSE: CBS) in particular. NBC already has nine original Web series planned for 2009, four of which have brand sponsors on board. It will pitch the remaining five to advertisers starting in January. CBS has two, including a companion show for its "Harper's Island" horror series. In contrast, ABC and the CW have scaled back on developing new online shows in favor of creating short clips that are tied to their TV existing series, or just porting said series to the Web.
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—SNL's Samberg chooses YouTube: With nearly 9 million views since being posted December 6, Andy Samberg's "Jizz in My Pants" is the most watched clip on YouTube this month. More noteworthy is that viewers have been able to access the music video-style Saturday Night Live skit on YouTube at all. NBC is meticulous about keeping unauthorized clips off the site in favor of its own video properties, but since Samberg and his production company The Lonely Island own the rights to the clip, they chose to serve it to YouTube's larger audience. CNET says Samberg's decision "raised some eyebrows," but that it makes sense because he's trying to expose the skit to the widest possible audience. While NBC.com and Hulu have reach, neither site can top YouTube in terms of mass appeal. Samberg also has a record deal with Universal Music Group in the works, and given YouTube's success in terms of music promotion, building a loyal fan base on the site is a no-brainer.
—People like streaming video at work: Now there's a shock ... Nielsen Online's latest VideoCensus report found that, in October, 65 percent of online video viewers watched at least one clip from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a weekday, the most popular daypart for streaming. Nearly all of those work-week streamers had broadband access, a likely factor contributing to their consumption. The second most popular daypart was weekends 6 a.m. - 8 p.m., with 51 percent of viewers watching at least one clip. 49 percent of people streamed video on weeknights from 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.; while just 43 percent of viewers watched Web clips during TV's traditional primetime: 8 p.m. - 11 p.m. Release.
—Machinimia.com hooks writers in for 15 new shows: Online gaming site Machinimia.com got $3.85 million in funding in November, and it will be using some of that cash to develop 15 new shows. Kotaku says writers from TV shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of Queens and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air have signed on to craft scripts for the shorts, which will be part of "The Machinimia Comedy Lab." No date has been set for the first pilot.
More after the jump. —Current and Rotten partner in series: And another original series play ... Al Gore-backed media company Current will partner with IGN's Rotten Tomatoes to launch a weekly show that digs into the latest movie news. NewTeeVee says the show will incorporate the crowd-sourced reviews and commentary that Rotten Tomatoes has become known for, though no word yet on when it will launch.
—NBC, CBS attract ad dollars with original Web series: Develop original online series or push existing shows to the Web? That's just one of the questions the tanking economy is forcing broadcast networks to ask themselves, according to TV Week. But a steady stream of ad dollars has made the original content route a lucrative one for NBC and CBS (NYSE: CBS) in particular. NBC already has nine original Web series planned for 2009, four of which have brand sponsors on board. It will pitch the remaining five to advertisers starting in January. CBS has two, including a companion show for its "Harper's Island" horror series. In contrast, ABC and the CW have scaled back on developing new online shows in favor of creating short clips that are tied to their TV existing series, or just porting said series to the Web.
Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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 YouTube is driving more than traffic to music labels like Universal Music Group. Rio Caraeff, EVP of UMG's eLabs, told CNET that YouTube is adding "tens of millions of dollars" to the recording company's bottom line: "(YouTube) is not like radio, where it's just promotional ... It's a revenue stream, a commercial business."
The video site shares revenue with record companies like UMG from ads appearing with their music videos, as well as user-generated clips featuring their artists' tracks. UMG's eLabs division has brokered such deals with YouTube and others, including MySpace Music, over the past three years, and has made about $100 million dollars off its music videos as a result. By Caraeff's account, YouTube has been responsible for a large chunk of that (which should make UMG doubly happy, since it, like some other labels, took a small stake in YouTube as part of the content-sharing deal). And while that's great for the labels, what about Google?
The company doesn't break out YouTube revenue, but the consensus among analysts and shareholders is that the site will still only contribute about one percent worth of Google's estimated $20 billion worth of revenue this year. But Caraeff says this may one of the first signs that YouTube's plethora of monetization strategies—from keyword, post-roll and local video ads, to content deals, live shows and even an orchestra competition—are starting to gel. "They have finally turned their spotlight on 'How do we turn this into a business?'" That they are having a hard time at it, is well, reality that they are finally at least facing head on…
Image: Universal Music Group artists The Killers.
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Or in YouTube producer Michael Buckley's case, you can quit your day job and get a dream job. Buckley quit his job as a music promoter after earning $100,000 from YouTube ads on his a thrice-a-week giddy celebrity rant What The Buck? (video embedded after the jump), he tells NYT. Since he first started posting clips of his cable access show on YouTube two years ago, Buckley has garnered 100,000 views and over 300,000 subscribers. Thanks to his sudden fame from YouTube, HBO signed him to a development deal three months ago.
-- Pipe dream: But before you start setting up your video camera, Buckley's happy ending will likely remain nothing more than a pipe dream for all but a precious few. As NYT mentions, YouTube's ad sharing program is limited to only about 3 percent of its clips, as advertisers remain wary of attaching their brands to user-gen.
-- No silver bullet: And even YouTube itself is still having a tough time figuring out its ad strategy. After raising hopes that ad overlays might be the best way to appeal to advertisers and viewers, the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) subsidiary has dropped the idea of a "silver bullet" this fall. Since then, it has been using a mix of overlays, pre-rolls and even post-rolls. On the audience growth front, YouTube is also facing strong challenges from the likes of Hulu. AdAge, looking at recent comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) numbers finds YouTube's glass half-full, noting that October video views rose 6.5 percent over July's numbers to nearly 5.4 billion views. Meanwhile, YouTube's share of the video category is down almost 10 percent over the same time period.
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Google's head of its mobile efforts Deep Nishar has left the company, and joining the heavily-backed LinkedIn as VP of product management, taking over the position founder Reid Hoffamn was looking after for a while now. Hoffman will remain at the company and shift his focus on broader strategy issues, reports WSJ. LinkedIn has raised over $100 million in funding, so not your typical startup, and considering Nishar's experience, likely will see more LinkedIn forays into mobile, more than the basic presence it has now.
This continues a line of senior execs who have left a "rapidly maturing" Google (NSDQ: GOOG) in recent times, to join startups and other companies with more challenges; among the more famous examples are Sheryl Sandberg who joined Facebook, and Douglas Merrill who joined EMI to head its digital business.
Nishar was the product head for Google's growing footprint in the mobile sector, including working closely with the Android team, and more recently was overseeing product development for the Asia-Pacific region. He was with company for over five years.
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 Trust ContentNext to accomplish the impossible. We got a major network exec, the head of an indie digital studio and the SVP of digital at one of the largest talent agencies in the business to agree on something: that though 2009 will be tough, the best thing for companies in the digital content space to do is stay the course. But that was only a small part of the Year-End Digital Media Review moderated by our founder and publisher Rafat Ali, who pushed them on questions like why all the networks can't play nice with Hulu, YouTube's image problem, and whether independent content development studios will be able to scale next year:
-- Why isn't ABC's content on Hulu?: Albert Cheng, EVP, digital media at Disney-ABC TV group said it's because Hulu is a distribution-and-reach play—and ABC has no problem getting views on its own. "We're one of the top 10 video sites in terms of unique viewers—we have more uniques than Hulu. They may have more streams, but that's because they have more than one network's worth of content. We're drawing in a multitude more viewers, and the key for us is to make sure that users know the content they're seeing comes from ABC. So you can get our player from anywhere: from AOL (NYSE: TWX), on Facebook, and even Hulu on video search, but we need to be the ones that are driving the monetization."
-- Networks don't need YouTube, either: "They have a challenge," Cheng said, when asked whether YouTube would be able to broker deals with networks for full clips of TV shows, a la Hulu. "Clearly they've been built up as a destination for short form. But to the credit of the [networks], as soon as video picked up, we figured out that we needed to build something online. And we did. So when you ask consumers where they get full episodes of their favorite shows, they say they go to the networks' sites. The question then becomes what do we get out of YouTube? More after the jump.
-- But YouTube does help the indies thrive: Miles Beckett, CEO and cofounder of EQAL, the studio behind lonelygirl15 and KateModern, said that his company loves sites like YouTube and Twitter because their robust APIs make it easy to add functionality to standalone properties. For example, EQAL currently lets users pull their entire YouTube profile into the new LG15 site, letting them keep all their favorites and preferences. "We see them as services. It's like we integrate YouTube as our video solution."
-- Expect the indies to find partners if they want to scale: Creating a breakout show (like LG15) that's backed by custom sponsorships from brands like Neutrogena is not necessarily a long-term, scalable model, Beckett said. But scaling out alone isn't the company's primary focus. "Ultimately our goal is to build community-based Websites with rich social features, and work with smaller production companies to bring their content online. We're also partnering with larger studios and networks to take their existing shows and create online extensions." Lewis Henderson, SVP and head of digital at the William Morris Agency said the talent firm was constantly working with both its large and small clients to manage those kinds of deals.
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