In 2018, Pocket Aces chose Netflix over YouTube to launch the second season of its most popular web series ‘Little Things’. Initially, Pocket Aces’ channel FilterCopy created the web series in the form of branded content for Little App and Velvet Case. And after the huge success of the series, it decided to put its best foot forward and became India’s first content creator to sign a deal with Netflix for the next season of Little Things. And there was no looking back for the platform since then.
Recently, TVF did something similar with its very famous web series Tripling for season 2. It partnered with SonyLiv and MX Player to share the content and also put it on its own OTT platform, TVF Play. Having expertise in the motorsports content space, GoQuest Digital Studios created a web series for Volkswagen and in the very beginning decided to cut YouTube from its distribution plan and partnered with YuppTV to distribute the content.
BuzzInContent.com talks to India’s major content creators and content marketing experts to understand the nitty gritty of this shift in the content distribution pattern.
OTT platforms show huge potential due to digital evolution
Content creators now have options beyond YouTube and Facebook, unlike yesterday. The evolution of the digital ecosystem since the launch of Jio in 2016 has directly led to the rise of OTT players in the market. With the right content strategy, the OTT platforms can attract more and more audience in the future.
Karan Chaudhry, President and COO, The Viral Fever, said, “Suddenly now there is a rise in the meaningful audience base, which is benefitting the OTT players. If they have the right strategy, they can get to a 100 million user base. In the next five years, we can see a huge OTT model coming out of India. This was not the case before. The digital ecosystem is evolved and has viable alternatives like Netflix, Amazon and Hotstar. Now, people are believing in the Netflix kind of model. A lot of investment is going into original content.”
YouTube and Facebook not suitable for premium content
YouTube has always been a user-generated content platform. To put premium content on it is not a viable option. Also, one can easily download content from these two platforms.
TVF Tripling’s Season 1 was a huge success on YouTube previously. But for season 2, it decided to launch it on its own platform and SonyLiv because it is premium content. Even for the next season of ‘Yeh Meri Family’, TVF struck a deal with OTT platforms instead of putting it on YouTube. For other forms of content, TVF will continue using Facebook and YouTube due to its phenomenal reach.
OTT helps monetise content well versus YouTube’s ad revenue model
Another reason for creators moving away from YouTube is that a lot of investment goes behind creating premium content and YouTube’s ad-revenue share model doesn’t justify the investment. Ad inventory is one monetisation option on YouTube, which is on a 55-45 ratio revenue share basis. As per YouTube guidelines, they expect full disclosure of the sponsor messages on the channel owned by creators, which is approved on a case-to-case basis. At times, YouTube might ask for revenue from that sponsorship also. While on the other hand, OTT platforms provide a huge sum of money to buy licences of these premium content produced by creators.
Kumar Deb Sinha, Country Head, Dentsu Story Labs, said, “At some point, you start realising that you are not able to monetise your content until or unless you are as big as ChuChu TV or some leading GECs. The only monetisation option available on YouTube and Facebook is advertising. We all know what kind of money we get paid for advertising on YouTube. That’s why what people have done is that they have adopted different strategies for different platforms.”
Saransh Agarwal, who leads content strategy and business for Flux (Content division of The Glitch), added, “Creating content for YouTube or Facebook doesn’t provide investment up front. It relies largely on ad-based revenue and is far too reliant on the success of each content piece. OTT platforms provide a significantly higher investment, quite frequently upfront, and almost never based on performance, which means that the creator is able to produce far better content with far less risk than ever before.”
YouTube’s ad revenue model is a blurred picture
There is also a problem in the ad revenue sharing model of YouTube. They do share data about the shares and views a content piece gets, but one can’t be sure that the revenue shared with the creator is the correct amount worth the content.
Darshan Bhatt, Director, India, South East Asia, Africa and Middle East, GoQuest Digital Studios, said, “If YouTube gives you Rs 10,000 every month, how would you know that YouTube is giving you the right amount? Because YouTube is not sharing the data with you. YouTube is sharing the number of people who have seen it but not telling how it is monetised.”
Therefore, GoQuest partnered with YuppTV for Volkswagen Ameo Cup on a revenue sharing model. “Unlike YouTube, YuppTV has also promoted my show. YouTube will charge money to promote,” added Bhatt.
Facebook and YouTube’s share and views numbers are questionable
Increasingly, people are questioning Facebook and YouTube if they have bought enough views compared to OTT platforms. Volkswagen Ameo Cup fetched more than five million views. Bhatt said, “If the same five million views had come from YouTube, people would have said that I have bought the views.”
Content discovery on YouTube and Facebook is cumbersome
For Bhatt, content discovery on YouTube is one major issue for which they don’t put content on the platform. Also, YouTube will not promote one’s content until unless it is among the top 10. He said, “I don’t have that much of bandwidth in terms of getting more and more subscribers. As a new content creator, how can I be sure that YouTube will promote my content because it doesn’t push content which is not in the top 10? They give place to content, but don’t promote it. Look at the other way round. If you put your content on SonyLiv, SonyLiv will invest money promoting it.”
Stamp of approval
If a content creator’s work is picked up by an OTT platform, it validates that the content is premium. Otherwise, why would an OTT platform pay for it? Agarwal said, “Anyone can upload content on YouTube or FB, but if your content is picked up by an OTT platform, it provides the validation that most creators crave. It is equated to ‘making it’, whereas YouTube and Facebook are beginning to be seen as a means to this end.”
A mix of all platforms works best for creators
Anirudh Pandita, Co-Founder, Pocket Aces, believes that it’s not that one should completely shift from Facebook and YouTube, but have a mix of distribution platforms in its strategy.
“We think that having various forms of distribution formats works best. With social distribution, you are able to get a lot of data and feedback right away. You need to have diversified revenue sources also. I also believe that there is room for subscription-based content platforms.
The third original on Netflix in India was our Little Things. Little Things started off as short videos on FilterCopy. It was sponsored by Velvet Case and Little App. It did very well at that time. For Netflix, it was a double win as they would get a larger audience on the back of Little Things’ previous success,” added Pandita.