YouTube is one of the tentpoles of the Web at this point in time, being a household name and one of the most-visited sites on the Internet. And yet Yahoo is reportedly planning to compete with YouTube by launching its own online video service. The fools.

YouTube Competition

YouTube is a giant amongst giants. It’s owned by Google, racks up 1 billion visitors every month who collectively watch 6 billion hours of video every month, and pushes out 100 hours of new content every minute.

That’s one hell of an achievement, and it makes YouTube a seemingly impossible scalp to take. It is for this reason that YouTube has hardly any competition.

There are lots of other video sites on the Web — Vimeo, Dailymotion, and Metacafe to name just three — but none that can compete in terms of content or eyeballs. Only a foolish company would even contemplate the idea of trying to beat YouTube at its own game…

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Unless you actively block or are able to tune them out, you’ll see ads everywhere you go online. HitBliss hopes to use this fact to attract consumers and advertisers to a new way of working together.

A Necessary Evil

No one really likes advertising, whether it’s online, at the cinema, or merely watching television at home. Instead they are a necessary evil, there to provide income for the providers who can then plow it back into producing more content we want to see.

This system works well for websites, few of which charge for content. It also works for some streaming services, which will play ads before, during, and/or after a video to make ends meet. Could it work on a grander scale, where people earn money which they can then use to purchase new movies and episodes of current TV shows?

We’ll find out when HitBliss launches comes out of beta.

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YouTube Partners, the individuals or organizations who go that extra mile, are being rewarded by YouTube. Both in monetary terms and by being given actual prizes by the Google-owned video site.

YouTube Partners

It could be argued that YouTube Partners are now the lifeblood of the site. These are the channel owners who are producing original content deemed worthy of incorporating advertising against. The revenue is split between YouTube and the Partner.

YouTube Partners range from famous celebrities and musicians right through to amateurs at home creating content with their own video cameras or smartphones. What they all have in common is adding something to the site beyond another video of a cat acting stupid.

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Not content with offering an alternative to broadcast television and cable channels, the Web is starting to mimic its longtime brother-in-arms. YouTube is about to get a swarm of new channels filled with original programming. With some big-name celebrities attached for good measure.

Rumors Aplenty

Back in February of this year it was rumored that Google was seeking celebrities to front channels that would make up a new section on YouTube dedicated to original programming. $5 million per channel/celebrity was on offer to those willing to commit.

In April the rumors changed slightly, with a $100 million pool of money set aside to create content for 20 channels. These would be new vertical channels based around genres - art, sport, technology, etc. - and change the look and feel of YouTube.

It turns out neither set of rumors was spot on, but both combined got somewhere near the truth.

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Despite being mostly terrible, infomercials and home shopping channels are big business, with people responding to them by cracking open their wallets and spending their hard-earned cash. So why is no one using online video to the same end?

Online Video Commerce

The vast majority of online video is created to entertain us, the viewers. But there are alternative uses for the medium, one of which is selling products, in much the same way as most television networks feature infomercials and some channels exist solely to sell us stuff we probably don’t need.

We’ve all seen infomercials on TV. They’re usually aired late at night when no one with any kind of life is watching. While the shopping channels are usually like a huge old-style department store open 24-hours a day.

Why has no one thought of combining the two and showing commercial videos online with the aim of enticing people into buying the products being shown off or demonstrated? Well someone, namely former Google executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, has.

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Ustream continues to add subscription options as it attempts to make the freemium model work. At least the latest one - Premium Memberships - is a lot cheaper than Ad-Free Broadcasting.

Ustream - From Strength-To-Strength

Ustream continues to grow from its humble beginnings in 2007. It now has millions of users streaming many more millions of hours of live programming. Not all of it is watchable, admittedly, but the mere fact it’s there and being broadcast is testament to the success of the site.

Charlie Sheen recently generated lots of publicity (but not all that many viewers) by hosting his own show on the site in the immediate aftermath of his firing from Two and a Half Men. But the bread-and-butter of the site is its hordes of ordinary people broadcasting their lives on the Internet.

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An analyst predicts that YouTube will generate revenues topping $1 billion in 2011, meaning profitability is all but guaranteed. The reason? More advertising, better advertising, and more revenue from advertising.

YouTube Revenues

Ever since Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 there has been a debate raging over whether the site will ever turn a profit. Revenue has steadily increased over the years, as the video count and video view count has. However, so has the cost of running the site.

YouTube now looks set to be a $1 billion business, and an integral part of Google as a whole. But do huge revenues equal even small profits?

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