YouTube’s move into the realm of professional and full-length content continues apace. And it’s now launching its first ever offline advertising campaign to promote the ‘Shows’ section of the U.K. version of the site.
The Past
When YouTube began it was, like every young online video startup, a lawless place with all sorts of content. But that couldn’t continue, and Google’s buyout along with Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit meant the site had to ‘go legit’, with copyrighted content a no-no.
This meant that UGC was focused on almost solely, with YouTube building a reputation as THE place to go for amateur-shot videos.
But that alone wasn’t going to see Google spin a profit from its massive investment. So YouTube aimed to place more professionally produced, copyrighted content on the site. Alongside both the deals that made it legal and the advertising to (hopefully) pay for it.
‘Shows’ & More
YouTube has since done plenty of deals to this end. Clips from some media organizations and full-length videos from others are now available to watch perfectly legally in most countries YouTube serves.
But it’s greatest achievement is in the U.K., where the company persuaded Channel 4 to make all its 4oD content available on YouTube.
The British YouTube now has a ‘Shows’ section with videos (some preview clips and some full episodes) from Channel 4 and 60 other broadcasters. But it still needs people to know about this if it’s to prove successful and pave the way for other, similar deals.
YouTube’s Got TV
According to The Guardian, YouTube is embarking on its first offline advertising campaign to do just that. For a company that was built on word-of-mouth and is still growing thanks purely to the Web, this is quite a change of pace and strategy.
The campaign is called YouTube’s Got TV and will comprise of poster ads on public transport, full-page ads in newspapers and magazines, and even the taking over of a shop in London’s Carnaby Street.
Anna Bateson, YouTube’s director of marketing, said:
“We know that YouTube users enjoy the huge range of content on the site, but there’s a growing demand in particular for full-length programming – so this campaign aims to tell our users that the full-length TV content has now arrived. The Shows section of the site is a major new opportunity for our partners and advertisers to reach new audiences.”
The Future
This clearly means YouTube means business. It wants professional content to be a big(ger) part of the site in future and therefore needs deals such as the Channel 4 one to be successful for both parties.
The U.K. could possibly be a testing ground for a wider roll-out of this kind of thing. It certainly wouldn’t hurt YouTube to have statistics showing how successful such a deal could be when trying to woo the big U.S. television networks and content creators.
