Amateur hits such as ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ have made YouTube a success, but Google sees its future in premium viewing. Photo: YouTube
Google, which owns YouTube, will charge as little as $1.99 per month (£1.28) for each channel on the new premium selection, the Financial Times reports.
But the BBC and Channel 4, two YouTube media partners previously rumoured to be channels introducing subscription charges, today denied their channels would introduce fees.
Speaking exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, a BBC spokeswoman said: “I can confirm that we will not be part of the “premium” specialist channels group that will be charging subscription fees for content.
“We’re currently focused on broadening our audience for advertising-supported shortform and longform across our network of YouTube channels, as well as further developing our original content channels.”
A Channel 4 spokeswoman also confirmed: “We are always interested to see the evolution of the YouTube platform but we have no immediate plans to launch any content behind a new subscription wall.”
According to sources close to Google, the subscription fees will apply to 50 as yet unnamed channels, and will add a significant second stream of revenue to the $3.1bn (£1.96bn) in advertising revenues that YouTube made in 2012.
A Google spokesman had earlier said the company was “looking into creating a subscription platform that could bring even more great content to YouTube for our users to enjoy and provide our creators with another vehicle to generate revenue from their content, beyond the rental and ad-supported models we offer”.
The report comes as Google chairman Eric Schmidt told a group of advertisers last week that YouTube was now the dominant form of viewing video among young people, a trend he hopes to extend to other demographics.
“It’s not a replacement for something that we know,” he said at an event in New York. “It’s a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms.”
YouTube recently surpassed the milestone of a billion unique users a month. Only the Google search engine and social network Facebook are frequented more often by those browsing the internet worldwide.
Digital research firm eMarketer estimates that video ad spending in the UK will reach £258 million this year, representing an increase of 52.6 per cent.
source: Telegraph
