YouTube offering top creators bonuses for exclusive videos, report says
YouTube is scrambling to offer bonuses to top creators who sign multiyear deals in a new strategy to combat aggressive overtures from rivals like Facebook and the video startup Vessel. That’s according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Citing people familiar with the discussions, the Journal says YouTube is offering the bonuses in exchange for an exclusive window on the service before uploading to other platforms, which they are otherwise free to do. YouTube has also been offering its video creators funding for additional programming, the paper says.
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YouTube declined to address the report’s specifics, but underscored its commitment to supporting creators — a recurring theme during its keynote at Vidcon.
“We’ve invested in YouTube creators for years, and have been increasing that support through a broad range of activities including marketing and content funding,” a YouTube spokesperson told Mashable. “We will continue to recognize and value the creativity of our top talent.”
The tug-of-war gets at the question of what YouTube even is; a passive social platform, the first video service to offer creators 55% of revenue, or a network-in-the-making? It might have survived indefinitely as the former, were it not for its rivals.
But those rivals are coming — and the report says Vessel is seeking similar exclusivity on its own platform, with a window of up to three days. That could force YouTube to act more like a network, sewing up deals with creators to keep them from featuring popular content elsewhere first.
The Journal says its sources are most concerned about Vessel, which was founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and has been wooing YouTubers after raising $75 million ahead of its launch later this year. It quoted one YouTube creator, whom it did not name, as saying that the startup is offering lucrative terms.
And that could be problematic for YouTube — if top creators gain confidence that their audiences will follow them wherever they go.
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