14 DAY TRIAL // In the perfect world, YouTube estimates the platform could have 6-7 million advertisers. Unfortunately for Google, YouTube currently attracts around 200,000 advertisers per quarter, meaning just 0.8 million per year.
At the Monaco Media Forum, Lucas Watson, YouTube's Vice President for Global Sales addressed the media after his keynote speech regarding YouTube's future financial strategies.
He reiterated the company's latest global strategy of focusing on premium content and their creators, while also focusing on bringing YouTube to as many devices as possible, with a special attention for TV devices.
“We are trying to attract content creators […] to YouTube[...] We have been making capital investments in great content creators, in people that have a proven ability to build an audience,” said Mr. Watson.
“We don't have any ownership stakes in the channels. We wanna be the platform that brings them to the world, but we're investing our revenues […] in helping them get started,” he also added.
“We are trying to attract 6 or 7 million advertisers that support these content creators and to the degree we can help an advertiser find their audience, particularly in a content area or genre area [...] [and give] the opportunity to put their brands around premium content,” said Mr. Watson, VP Global Sales, YouTube.
Mr. Watson estimates YouTube will launch 10-20 channels in January, and just over 100 during the next year.
For certain, not all the 6-7 million possible advertisers will have a chance to bid on these new premium quality channels and the videos they'll be putting out, but YouTube's goal is to eventually reach 3,000 premium quality channels or better.
This massive infusion of quality content YouTube prepares for is part of a global push the company has been making in adding YouTube to as many Internet-connected TV sets as possible, while also providing up-to-par TV-quality productions to go with it.
But if all goes well with YouTube's plans, their dream of conquering TV sets will surely bring the same kind of money and interested advertisers that TV marketing has had for years.
This automatically means an increase for their potential advertisers figure, more than the current estimation of 6-7 million.
Here's Mr. Wilson's entire video interview for Andy Plesser of Beet.tv, with some extra details.