Former YouTube exec: don't alienate fans by leaving the streaming service

YouTube may have more than one billion monthly viewers, but in 2015 it’s facing the prospect of real competition.

Facebook videos are now being watched 3bn times a day with persistent rumours that the social network is encouraging popular YouTube stars to start uploading videos directly to their Facebook pages.

Vine and Snapchat have emerged as new platforms for shortform videos – including the latter’s Discover section, which launched in January – while startup Vessel is trying to convince YouTubers that it can make them much more money than YouTube if they grant it 72-hour exclusives on their new videos.

Unsurprisingly, Patrick Walker has been watching closely. Once YouTube’s senior director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, he’s since worked at multi-channel network Base79, which was subsequently bought by another MCN, Rightster. In January 2015, Walker became chief executive of that company.

“I am still very bullish on YouTube, and still today it is absolutely critical to our plans. But now due to the increase in broadband and the dollars flowing in to online video, there are more people investing deeply in the space,” says Walker.

“There are the usual suspects: the Yahoos and the AOLs still offering great services. But there’s the emergence of new platforms like Vessel, Amazon with their Fire Box, and video becoming commonplace on websites of all kinds, including newspapers.

“And now Facebook doing 3bn views a day, where did that come from? I remember standing on the YouTube stage when they announced a billion views a day, and now Facebook is three times that a couple of years later. And there’s Snapchat, and Twitter video, which both have some ex-YouTube guys involved ...”

Rightster works with nearly 2,000 content owners and 7,500 online publishers – The Guardian included, in the past – helping them to build audiences and make money on YouTube, other online video services, and websites.

Walker has had a ringside seat at the development of online video well before joining YouTube in 2006 as its head of video partnerships outside the US: after starting his career making TV shows in Japan, he oversaw TV, radio and online output at the BBC’s south east Asia bureau, before moving back to the UK in 2000 to work on broadband video site Network of the World.

“It was all about making short form video, but it was just too early and died a miserable death – mostly because not enough people had broadband,” he says. Since then, Walker says he has watched the media world catch up with the potential of short form content, fuelled by YouTube’s growth.

“It’s a whole new range of content types that are free and independent from the tyranny of the 30-minute TV window,” says Walker.

“A show only needs to be as long as it needs to be: make what works for the content. You don’t have to force something into a traditional show length.”

In 2015, TV networks are increasingly keen to tap in to the reservoir of YouTubers, who in turn are exploring opportunities to expand their audiences (and make more money) outside Google’s online video service.

Walker delivers a warning: if they are too swift to leap on other opportunities, YouTubers risk alienating the audiences that gave them this clout in the first place. He cites Lucas Cruikshank as one example: the first YouTuber to reach a million subscribers, in 2009, who subsequently signed a deal with Nickelodeon.

“It’s a cautionary tale: he jumped a bit too far into Nickelodeon’s world and lost his audience. Creators now are very smart, and very particular about protecting the authenticity of their audience. The great ones are maintaining a YouTube presence and being respectful to their history, but they are experimenting on other platforms,” says Walker.

“We are at the forefront of a battle between great forces in attracting young audiences and, as a Variety survey showed last year, YouTube stars are more popular than TV stars for US teenagers. More popular by a long shot. These guys have worked their way into the public consciousness in a way that many people still have trouble understanding.”

Now bossing a company responsible for helping stars and brands decide which new platforms will give YouTube a run for its money, Walker notes that Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are currently the focus of much attention from the latter in particular.

“Brands get attracted to audiences, and audiences are built by great platforms building trust with users. I think we can see these things – creators developing new ways to communicate with these new audiences on Snapchat and Facebook to some extent, on Twitter to some extent, and then brands will follow,” he says.

However, YouTube’s first recruit outside the US in its growing years doesn’t think his old company is destined to fall out of favour any time soon.

“YouTube has been around for 10 years, and look at how it’s ingrained in people’s lives: politically, socially and culturally. My children are 14 and 15, and it’s inconceivable to them that YouTube didn’t exist once,” he says.

“They’ve done a great job in staying cool, mostly. That’s the big challenge for these new platforms: to attract the cool kids, and then stay cool enough to keep them.”

That’s why Walker believes YouTube stars should think carefully when negotiating deals with rival services, even when tempted by sizeable advances and/or promises of increased income.

“That cheque may look shiny, but a high revenue-share and big cheque with no audience is no strategy. If you’re trying to build a long term relationship with your audience, you can’t ignore the place where that audience exists,” he says.

“So think twice before jumping ship. But in many ways this is just like investing money: you want to have a diversified portfolio.”

That approach extends to the way online video stars make their money too, with most striving not to rely solely on the income from adverts running before and during their videos.

“Most big YouTube talents are probably making 50% of their revenues from direct brand deals,” says Walker, citing Rightster’s partnership with Turkish Airlines in 2014 to fly 10 prominent YouTubers to exotic locations to make branded videos as an example of the kind of campaign we’ll see more of.

This, in turn, is ensuring that YouTube stars spend more energy cultivating their fanbases on other services.

“Those [brand] revenues are largely linked to their social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc,” he says. “If I get paid a certain amount of money to make a video, I’m going to tweet it and put it on my Facebook page. The dollars are much more diversified than before.”