YouTube has started reaching for its chequebook, and the terms are unusually blunt. The platform is offering popular channels millions of dollars to post their videos on YouTube first and keep them there exclusively for a set window, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the talks. The money would come in more than one shape. YouTube has discussed directly financing some programmes, and has also offered to hand creators a slice of the large brand campaigns it controls.Then comes the condition. Creators who sign with Netflix and release videos on both platforms at the same time will face consequences, YouTube has told them. Those channels are less likely to be pushed in marketing campaigns or given stage time at YouTube events, and they would be cut out of revenue from certain big brand campaigns. Nothing has been signed yet, Bloomberg reports, though YouTube is close to agreements with several partners.
Why Netflix suddenly became YouTube’s problem
Netflix has spent the past year quietly hoovering up YouTube talent. It has paid creators including Alan Chikin Chow and Nick DiGiovanni to post the same videos in both places, and remains in talks with dozens more channels and shows, among them the celebrity interview series Hot Ones. The pitch is easy to accept. Creators get paid millions extra for videos they were making anyway, plus exposure to a service with more than 325 million subscribers.It is working. Ms. Rachel finished among Netflix’s 10 most watched titles in the first half of the year, ahead of new seasons of The Night Agent and The Lincoln Lawyer, at a fraction of a prestige drama’s budget. Not everyone has said yes, though. Netflix wants videos delivered days in advance, which does not suit how most creators work, and it has asked some to strip out brand sponsorships.
What YouTube’s brand deal warning means for creators
YouTube’s argument is commercial rather than sentimental. It says cross-posting drags down viewership and signals that a channel no longer treats YouTube as its main home. There is a sales problem underneath that. Advertisers are harder to convince when the same video is sitting on Netflix.Chief Executive Neal Mohan has long said creators who work with rivals end up sending viewers back anyway, and almost none of them actually leave. Paying individual channels also risks irritating the thousands that get nothing. But Mohan and his team decided in recent weeks that the steady drift towards simultaneous uploads needed answering. YouTube still does not want to become a studio that funds shows and shapes them creatively.It has played this hand before, paying creators to avoid Jason Kilar’s short-lived startup Vessel, and building Shorts once TikTok arrived.Separately, from August 24, YouTube begins counting a view from the first frame across all formats, with the older metric renamed Engaged views. Earnings are unaffected. The company says the change helps creators show brands their real scale, which, given the week’s news, is convenient timing.