Hearst-Argyle reveals some YouTube metrics
Michael Gay November 1st, 2007
Another round of YouTube channels were launched today by Hearst-Argyle to bring their group of official channels up to 26. It’s taken a few months for all the HTV stations to launch since the partnership was first announced in June. When this started, Hearst-Argyle was the first local broadcaster to form the revenue partnership. We’ve blogged that LIN is launching YouTube channels as well. The hidden headline from today’s press release deals with the metrics. A commenter had asked before for numbers, but they weren’t public until now. Hearst-Argyle reports hitting 13 million video streams in the first five months of the partnership. Considering many of the stations hadn’t even launched until today, that’s a notable number. (Disclosure: I work for Hearst-Argyle and am directly involved in the YouTube channels.)
12 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | November 1st, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Doesn’t Michael Gay work for Hearst Argyle?
2. Michael Gay | November 1st, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Hmm… Let me check my post. Yup, said that. I guess I’ve got this blogging thing down. haha
3. Safran | November 1st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Doesn’t Michael Gay blog for Lost Remote?
4. Cory | November 1st, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Wait a minute, doesn’t Safran work for AR&D? David works for Scripps? And Don and I both work for Belo?
Shit, there’s a conflict of interest all over the place.
Looks like we gotta get bloggers from every other media and consulting company to balance this out.
5. Rob | November 1st, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I like those numbers Michael and thanks for posting them. When we started our YouTube page (We’re not ‘official’ as we’re just one TV station in a small media group of 5 primary TV affiliates) there was a lot of skepticism.
Reading this kind of information validates our local initiative on YT, so thanks for the insight to what you’re doing over at Hearst-Argyle.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Belo. I have friends that still work at Belo. You sir are no Jack Kennedy.)
6. thedetroitchannel | November 1st, 2007 at 7:50 pm
ok, focus-group-of-one detects corporate calling these things “channels” on youtube.
gotta get hip and carry that over. now.
rebranding thehawaiichannel would also be a mistake. just look at kmbc… hasn’t even gotten that ‘blip’ that is so often the case.
and, if lr reader terry mackin really wants to “broaden their reach beyond their broadcast boundaries” now is a great time to reassess what the f’ck a random assortment of 4 letters means to anybody outside THAT market.
all the best to you guys!
7. Michael Gay | November 1st, 2007 at 8:13 pm
tdc, pull up the Nielsen numbers for Milwaukee last month where we rebranded themilwaukeechannel.com to wisn.com before you continue to tell me about how I should do my job. WISN is nearly tied with JSonline for uniques, while the other TV stations in the market are less than a third of our size. No one deserves to be attacked for their job performance based on your personal opinion. I have a proven record to stand by. When you have that, I will welcome an educated debate. We can even stream it live on one of your citychannel.com’s and see if anyone finds it.
8. tdc | November 1st, 2007 at 8:32 pm
wisn had an unusual circumstance happen almost simultaneously with their rebrand and you know that… the bridge collapse where wisn happened to be about the closet thing ib had in the area.
since then it has been downhill and you know that too. except maybe for the overload of placements on cnn (which lr readers have called “dreck”) .
your proven track record is still being written. and as i said, i wish you success. but when local sites are pulling down 2 ONE THOUSAND-th’s of 1% of internet users and are NOT growing…
9. Anonymous | November 2nd, 2007 at 8:35 am
It;s all about full disclosure
Safran makes it clear who he works for and mentions if it involves his company…same for the Belo folks
Just think transparency is important
10. peter arthurson | November 2nd, 2007 at 8:28 pm
13 million in how many months?
belo could hit a million video plays in several days
what percentage of traffic was this? what kind of an increase in video traffic was it? did they make money on it?
as usual the missing questions speak VOLUMES
(also, how big of a downturn did the website’s own video take during this time? in other words, how many people went to youtube INSTEAD of going to the station site????)
I bet overall site usage of the core site went DOWN
11. peter arthurson | November 4th, 2007 at 10:56 am
ahhhh.. the truth slowly comes out…
13 million over five months???????
c’mon???
how much is that ADDITIONAL than what they would have had otherwise and how much can be attributed to one or two events?
not only that, how much is that from areas well outside the market areas of each station — pvs or visits or exposure that is worthless…
this is such crap it is unbelievable.
please present the truth and the full story… or don’t give us any of it….
these half truths that only support your side of things is worth than no info…
dumb, dumb, dumb.
I dare the full truth to be revealed. really.
c’mon next commenter, just change the subject to something to keep our eyes off the ball…
that is what this is all about — keep changing the reality we operate in to keep everyone confused that they NEED consultants to cut through the crap.
obfuscation is the consultant’s DREAM!!!
12. thedetroitchannel | November 4th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
p.a.- while i agree there is alot that can be gleaned from the numbers, give credit where it’s due.
of that 13M streams a large percentage are from an auto-start vid that runs unlike any other youtube channel that i’ve clicked. so that 13M is not all revenue generating because the home screen of all these channels carries no ads.
maybe something like 9 million or so streams generate an ad. at $40 per thousand you can do the math.
now, divide that by 5 months, divide that by an average 15 stations or so and divide that amongst goog/youtube and hearst argyle.
you’ll come up with a monthly revenue figure about what one :30 spot costs on a top10 market’s 11pm newscast.
terry mackin’s quote that they were looking to expand beyond their broadcast boundaries is probably the most significant statement in the release.
they’ll have to because there is no way cpm’s are going to pay the bills.
my argument hasn’t changed over the last 2 years.
circle the wagons and rebrand as a “randomsearchresult.com” ain’t gonna do it.
if it were, there are already 100’s (if not thousands) of wxxx.com or kxxx.com’s that would be making actually $ online.
instead, they rely in a SEARCH ENGINE result to get some additional traffic. where’s the innovation there?
the fine folks at (then) ibs had this thing right from the start.
unfortunately it’ll take a little while while someone with a “proven track record” figures this out.
all the best!
and, give ‘em some credit for trying!
Leave a Comment
(Please keep URLs out of the comment body or the spam filter will block you.)Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed