A successful Youtube channel should “probably be making a brand about £1m a year as a starting point”, the head of video at Hearst UK has advised.
Brian Whelan, Hearst UK’s director of video and audio, has built 20 Youtube channels for the publisher of 16 lifestyle magazines, including Elle, Good Housekeeping and Country Living magazines.
“I’ve got 16 brands to do 16 revenue strategies for,” he said. “I’ve built a lot of very big Youtube channels, and there’s a lot of background money in Youtube.
“A good Youtube channel should probably be making a brand about £1m a year as a starting point. I’m not saying that we’ve got that as a number, [but] a brand [should] ask what they can sell, under operators and in partner sales.”
The UK Youtube channel for Hearst brand Harper’s Bazaar has 275,000 subscribers, Cosmopolitan 140,000 subscribers, Men’s Health 116,000, and Elle magazine 114,000. Other brands, including Good Housekeeping (37,300 subscribers), fall below the 100,000 mark.
“Good Housekeeping Institute has its own show, where experts clean filthy things: it’s called Absolute Filth. Can a brand sponsor that? Can there be a spin off from that, with branded content deals all the way down?” Whelan gave as an example of a potential revenue generator.
Whelan told Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference in London last week that a “successful video strategy” involves selling “absolutely everything upfront” when looking at video strategy, podcasts and ad reach – but doing so alongside Youtube advertising, which shares 55% of revenue with channel owners.
“You could probably make as much of one well sold, serious sponsorship as you might off Youtube in a whole year. But you’ve got to do both.
“We’re not in a position where any one revenue strategy was bringing so much money that you abandon everything else. We fight on every front.”
‘Great’ magazine should have Youtube channel and podcast
Whelan also shared that Hearst has recently launched studios for podcasts, cooking shows and photoshoots, describing this as “a serious statement of intent about placing ourselves in the long-form video, long-form audio and multimedia space, which is not to replace our magazines”.
[Read more: Independent’s video and podcast Studio aims to become biggest revenue driver]
He said: “The best time to get good at video is ten years ago, and second best time to get good at video is right now. A great magazine should also have a great podcast [as well as a] Youtube channel drawing in sponsorship and subscriptions.”
Asked by panel chair and Press Gazette contributor Richard Headland what role AI is playing for publishers in terms of leading video production, streamlining it and shaving down costs, Whelan said AI “shouldn’t be anywhere near the creative process of a video”.
“What AI is genuinely good at is saving time through transcribing, mixing the camera to focus on the right person, headline suggestions and data processing,” he said. “But the average video editor can edit better than an AI tool.”
‘Reluctance among broadcasters to think of digital video’
This year Sky News launched its 2030 plan to move away from live, breaking TV news towards putting premium digital video “at the heart” of its output.
Managing director and executive editor Jonathan Levy said: “It’s been about shifting the organisation to think about the digital platform as a video platform – that’s really important. There’s been a reluctance amongst broadcasters to think of digital video.”
Part of this shift has been revenue-focused, as “digital videos are about five times more valuable than display advertising”, and revenue sources are set to change, Levy said.
[Read more: Sky News plans for life after 2030 with ‘premium video’ focus and possible paid content]
“As a broadcaster, most of our revenue has come from broadcast advertising. What we understand is, in the future, it is going to come from a greater diversity of sources.”
On Youtube, Levy said Sky News videos on Youtube like one about a whites-only community in America that got 1.6 million views and one by correspondent Stuart Ramsay about the West Bank with 1.5 million views are generating “genuine revenue”.
He said Youtube “feels like something quite different” compared to other third-party platforms. “The relationship is different. The monetisation is different… Their fastest-growing device is the TV set. So is that third-party platform actually becoming the new TV?”
Levy added: “But the other thing is, when we’re thinking about our commercial as well as our editorial future, we’re thinking about what are we good at? In the end, we’re going to win where we’re good at something and we’re good at telling stories through video.
“So whether it’s selling a subscription, generating advertising on Youtube, on our owned-and -operated platforms, whatever it is, are we more likely to win telling stories in video, which is what we know how to do best and have been doing for 36 years, or are we going to do it competing in other formats where we have less experience? So fundamentally, we think we’re going to do it in video, because that’s what we believe we’re world class at.”
This is why Sky News is ensuring its journalists are thinking “about video in everything they do”.
“If they’re doing a podcast, can it be shot? If they’re writing a piece that is text based, can they insert video into it?” asked Levy.
Video strategy making newsrooms ‘unrecognisable’
Connie Krarup, media lead at Q5 Partners, said the “size or scale of a newsroom” shouldn’t sway a publisher from moving towards video. While newsrooms are upending their operating models to an “unrecognisable degree” when adopting video strategies, “there is no one-size-fits-all approach”.
Newsrooms, whether organising content around verticals, audience growth or a platform-and-hub model, “will require a slightly different setup in terms of teams and skills”.
Q5 works with publishers to “map out every single activity that is required to produce a video”.
“People sit back and say, ‘we’re re-versioning the same video clip 26 times in 30 different places involving multiple different teams, that’s crazy’,” Krarup said.
“We can consolidate and centralise some of those core skills. It also reveals those hotspots where we need that talent.”
AI as a solution to ‘re-versioning’ video content
Another solution to “re-versioning” video content is AI, said BBC executive editor of growth, social and weather Jonny McGuigan.
He explained that through identifying overlapping content, it prevents video content being reproduced by different teams. One example is through “mind-numbingly dull” tasks like naming conventions, he said.
“It turns out if we all choose to use the same name for something, the world can be fixed a lot quicker, but actually trying to get thousands of journalists around the world to use the same name for something is, oddly, one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced in my career.”
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