CNET reported today that YouTube is in talks with some major Hollywood execs to bring full-length feature film streaming to their website. YouTube is the most popular video sharing site on the web, so it would be no surprise that they are in negotiations with major movie studios talking about the possibility of teaming up and streaming full-length feature films. The mega-giant-behemoth of Google/YouTube could greatly benefit from adding full-length movies to their lineup, they recently made the decision to offer TV shows on their website. Hulu is the current industry leader for full-length movie and television show streaming and a show down is about to erupt.
The idea is to embed advertisements into the movie thus making this a profitable merger for all parties involved, however, balancing out enough advertising to make the merger worthwhile might discourage viewers from watching. The possible form of advertisements are preroll, postroll or overlays. Since Google purchased the billion-dollar website their biggest program has been figuring out how to monetize it properly, this may be just the thing that Google has been searching for. YouTube will move above and beyond their current audience of viewers into something much more monetizable. Hulu currently shows short ads before during and after the presentations and it has worked for them, so it would make sense for YouTube to follow the same model but executives aren’t releasing the details just yet.
To make the merger work YouTube would need to do some serious re-work of their video quality. Hulu has long been the dominating force in this video market and they offer high quality streaming. Not to mention Hulu already has contracts with NBC Universal and News Corp. Hulu only receives a small percentage of YouTube viewers and I think that is due to the fact most people don’t know that they are around. YouTube has so many viewers that they will easily and quickly become the dominating force in this market once this is introduced (yes, it is inevitable).
This is also a great opportunity for independent film makers to reach a world-wide audience. YouTube has long been against hosting any videos longer than 10 minutes so this would be a big leap for them.
Some industry executives have even said we could begin seeing movies on youTube in the next 30 to 90 days if everything runs smoothly. We’re hoping so.
