The author is missing some key knowledge about the industry. Selling analytics data could be a good fit for Twitter, but not for YouTube. Here's why:
1) YouTube's value is their user generated content. If the content goes, the site's value does too.
2) The highest-margin videos for YouTube are the most popular ones. These are often professionally produced and have distribution companies behind them. With UGC, the short tail subsidizes the long tail.
3) Professional video producers/distributors who consistently have popular videos already have sophisticated analytics software, often in house. They get their analytics data periodically and directly from Google, in a fairly raw format. Its way too much data to practically transfer through an API or web interface.
4) These users' financial incentive to produce the content is the revshare agreement they have with Google on the ads which run alongside their content. YouTube's volume currently makes them the best source of revenue for video makers.
So when you talk about selling* analytics data to the users, you're talking about selling a far inferior product for a paltry sum to a partner you already do orders of magnitude more commerce with each month.
Sure, you can argue that there might be regular folks who would be willing to pay for analytics data (that they're already getting free now), but I find that a bit naive. Either way, you don't want to waste your time trying to sell cheap software to small fish, and its definitely not worth $120B/yr.
Thanks for your insight. Here's the deal though ->
1) Agreed!
2) Agreed!
3) Don't Agree. If there's value to the data there's a way to share it. Saying that it's too much data is just an easy way to say no.
4) You're right. Google Ads support YouTube. This won't last forever. Advertising online is falling apart - slowly - but it's getting cheaper and cheaper and less and less effective. So, looking at additional revenue streams seems like a good idea to me.
1) YouTube's value is their user generated content. If the content goes, the site's value does too.
2) The highest-margin videos for YouTube are the most popular ones. These are often professionally produced and have distribution companies behind them. With UGC, the short tail subsidizes the long tail.
3) Professional video producers/distributors who consistently have popular videos already have sophisticated analytics software, often in house. They get their analytics data periodically and directly from Google, in a fairly raw format. Its way too much data to practically transfer through an API or web interface.
4) These users' financial incentive to produce the content is the revshare agreement they have with Google on the ads which run alongside their content. YouTube's volume currently makes them the best source of revenue for video makers.
So when you talk about selling* analytics data to the users, you're talking about selling a far inferior product for a paltry sum to a partner you already do orders of magnitude more commerce with each month.
Sure, you can argue that there might be regular folks who would be willing to pay for analytics data (that they're already getting free now), but I find that a bit naive. Either way, you don't want to waste your time trying to sell cheap software to small fish, and its definitely not worth $120B/yr.
*I'd be tempted to say extorting