Friday, April 24, 2009

Susan Boyle: 100 Million YouTube Views But Who Gets The Revenue ?

Susan Boyle has one of the most popular videos in YouTube history, logging roughly 100 million views in a little over a week. But neither YouTube nor Sony Music, which owns* Britain's Got Talent's production company, Fremantle Media, has gotten any money from those streams. With all those views comes a lot of potential ad revenue, but ITV, the TV network which puts out the Britain’s Got Talent show, haven’t seen any of it and it’s their own fault. The management at ITV insisted that they wanted special terms from Google because they knew the video would be a big hit. So instead of opting for the YouTube tried-and-tested advertising methods ITV went into discussions with them. Ben McOwen Wilson, director of online for ITV said:

We don’t want to be part of YouTube’s standard terms and conditions, because content like Susan Boyle is unique … I think both sides are being hard-nosed and commercial about it.

Ad: See funny pictures and clips here.

Google has confirmed the decision not to show advertising next to the video was that of ITV. Now it seems they have missed out on the revenue completely. No one's selling downloads of the song on Susan Boyle's YouTube videos either, probably because a downloadable recording hasn't yet been made. But that's another missed revenue stream.

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