Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 10:13 PM PT

 

YouTube: All Partners Are Not the Same

YouTube wrote in to let us know that our back-of-the-envelope math on its partner program had a fatal flaw, because the site pays different partners different CPMs.

We had used one partner’s example of making $1600 for about 2 million views to assume that YouTube’s just-announced figure of $1 million paid out to users was in exchange for about 1.25 billion views. However, different partners command different audiences, a YouTube spokesperson said, so they receive different ads that are worth different CPMs.

YouTube also said that it has “many more” than 100 user partners. We had counted based on the most-subscribed partner list, but it turns out that list is only limited to the top 100. However, the site would not disclose the total number of partners in its user partner program.

 

Sphere
Topic: Money & Power
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. Those numbers are still prettu hazy..

    Free Youtube Video Templates on April 17th, 2008 at 8:05 am - Permalink
  2. YouTube’s reluctance to produce verifiable data implies that they have something to hide.

    I’ve heard similar CPM data from other “smaller” partners.

    These are disappointing numbers for burgeoning content creation teams out there. YouTube needs to reevaluate their tiered system… a view is a view. In fact, it could be argued that the more viral the view the better the chance that an advertiser is finding a new consumer.
    Paying the “Big Boys” a higher CPM rate can only lead to community disappointment and eventual exodus… perhaps the “Do No Evil” mantra doesn’t apply to Google’s subsidiaries.

    Jamie Tocino on April 17th, 2008 at 8:46 am - Permalink
  3. actually the more viral the view the more likely the view isn’t occuring ON youtube itself which is another flaw in the math. you may get 2MM views but if only 1MM of them are actually on youtube where a banner and/or overlay are displayed, you’re only getting paid for half your views.

    stc on April 18th, 2008 at 1:49 am - Permalink
  4. [...] this is about 10 to 14 times as much as a YouTube star is able to get, even taking into account YouTube’s claims that they pay different (undisclosed) rates to different partners. The real message is not that we [...]

    Pirates Pay Better Than YouTube | jamie.com on April 19th, 2008 at 3:09 am - Permalink

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