YouTube, which has gained popularity by allowing users to share their short video creations, has garnered a user base of roughly eighty-million. Hulu, another on-line video service has only a fraction of the users which YouTube boasts, yet was able to generate more revenue than its competitor in the previous year. Why is this so? One reason, feature films.
Hulu, a joint venture by NBC Studios and News Corp, has one major difference from YouTube. Where YouTubers have access to a large repository of user-uploaded and created content, Hulus possess access to full length television shows. It would seem that advertisers are far more comfortable with television shows and feature length movies than they are with peer created home movie-esque films.
Google, the company which owns YouTube, has stated publicly that YouTube as a revenue generating model in its current form is not as efficient as some competitors. It seemed that it was only a matter of time before the Internet behemoth made the move towards full length features.
Canadian film company, Lionsgate, has agreed to give YouTubers access to short excerpts from films. However, Google remains in talks to attempt to acquire ad-supported full length features for its users.
Hulu may have the upper hand at the current moment, but if YouTube is able to acquire such content and present it to what is a far larger audience than that of Hulu, Google may see revenues soar and users rejoice.
The most optimistic of claims suggest that such programming may be available on YouTube within the next couple of months.