The Google/YouTube merger must be seen as an emerging business model and the value is not with YouTube’s revenues. Some think Google could have bought the New York Times for that much money — maybe – but that crowd is not the online audience that Google’s advertisers want.
Google’s advertisers desire YouTube’s audience. That’s what was really sold yesterday - access to an audience that is craved by marketers.
Google has the advertising pool and infrastructure to monetize Web pages and YouTube delivers the kind of content many advertisers want: young, smart, creative people with pocket money and spare time to spend.
Welcome to the media mogul that did not set out to become one.
Of course neither Google nor YouTube went into business to become a large media concern but that is what they keenly decided they had become and are now leveraging their ability to deliver a tightly-focused audience to people who want to pay to be in front of them.
Continue reading ‘Google bought YouTube’s audience and other lessons for mass media’
