First reported by The Information, the YouTube version of TikTok has been dubbed ‘Shorts’. The TikTok competitor is rumored to live within the existing YouTube app and take advantage of YouTube’s music licensing deals.

This doesn’t come as a total shock. YouTube has been quietly incorporating TikTok style features for some time now. Over the last month or so YouTube’s app has changed features that mirror TikTok in three big ways:

1) Emphasizing categories vs search
2) Curating content experiences
3) Providing content prompts

CATEGORIES VS SEARCH

Last week I wrote about how YouTube shifted its emphasis from search to more curated experiences (like TikTok) and was bracketing content categories in a manner very similar to hashtag challenges.

Historically, YouTube placed an emphasis on search (it being the second largest search engine). Recently the search feature was changed to ‘explore’. Now when you click on ‘explore’, there are categories of content featured that site above recommended and trending videos. Previously the app had trending and recommended content. This mimics TikTok’s has ‘discover’ feature.

At the top of TikTok’s discover page is curated content categories, hashtag challenges, and list of trending hashtags. 

YouTube is evolving from specific video recommendations to an emphasis on broader categories. 

CURATED CONTENT

When you click on a content category there’s a header and  curated list of videos to watch. This is layout is similar TikTok.

On TikTok if you click through to one of the content categories or hashtag challenge there’s a banner across the top, description of the content and then a curated list of TikTok’s to watch.

PROMPTING CONTENT CREATION

YouTube seems to be taking cues from TikTok’s hashtag challenges. TikTok’s hashtag challenges act as prompts for users to create content. Creators often jump on the challenges in hopes of being featured high up on the challenge pages and getting exposure.

YouTube has begun experimenting with its own hashtag challenges.
Due to Coronavirus millions have been forced to stay home. YouTube helped get the word out by launching the Stay Home #withme challenge. The Stay home #withme challenge invited creators to make videos around activities anyone could do from home. 

YouTube consolidated all #withme videos under the hashtag (much in the same way TikTok does). YouTube doesn’t typically create or promote specific content asks from its community. In making this change YouTube mirrored hashtag challenges.

These are big shifts for YouTube.

Search has been such a big part of the site, that playing a larger role in promoting ’discovery’ seems as though the platform is looking to modify behavior in a significant way. Additionally, YouTube has historically been passive in content creation. With the launch of #withme YouTube clearly provided a prompt for the broader community.

These changes, which are influenced by TikTok, are likely providing data to YouTube to inform their ‘Shorts’ launch.

Brat creates original scripted programming catering to teenage girls. The company has shown explosive growth – in just over a year they’ve generated over 22 million views and three million subscribers. Brat has grown, at least in part, due to its regularly featuring popular influencers such as Anna Cathcart, Addison Riecke, Francesca Capaldi, and Emily Skinner.

What I find really interesting about Brat is their approach to working with influencers – they incorporate influencers to build audiences, but their IP doesn’t live or die based on any individual talent.  Instead, Brat has modeled itself after the Marvel Cinematic Universe where all characters and shows exist in a single universe of the same (fictional) county.

Brat gets to capitalize on influencer audiences – essentially building a market into the content/product itself. Most influencer content is lo-fi (when compared to traditional TV and films), as a result Brat is able to create more ‘native’ looking/lower cost content, which costs less. Rob Fishman, co-founder of Brat, said that they’re keeping costs very low/that they’re “spending in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for every season.” This budget conscious production is necessary given the YouTube environment where CPM’s are low (and at times disappear entirely).

In looking at Brat I see a lot of parallels to AwesomenessTV – they both cater to a younger, female demo, and produce content featuring influencers. Where they seem to differ is Brat is operating more lean and mean, and has a more straightforward path to becoming a profitable business.

In Digiday, Brat Co-Founder, Fishman stated that “If you’re spending any meaningful amount of money on production, there’s not yet a business model that’s totally supported by the platforms,” I agree with that. Ad revenue on YouTube isn’t as reliable as it used to be and even with ad integrations and sponsorships the ad model is very difficult.

That said, Brat is building massive audiences with their content, and doesn’t have to wait for advertisers to generate revenue. They’re vertically integrated, and are building up their own brand and selling their own products. If you visit the Brat website you’ll be able to by Brat branded merch, makeup, and jewelry. In looking at their site it looks as though their products must be selling well – several items are sold out.

Brat also seems to be laser focused on developing their own IP – I think that’s going to help them stay focused and not overextend themselves. Furthermore, it will allow them to be less solely reliant upon specific talent. Brat isn’t reliant upon one influencer to make or break their business. Now that they’ve created this brand and this audience they can test different stories and talent without it all hinging upon big influencers to make it a success.

It will be interesting to see how the company evolves and what role advertisers play in their business. At a glance, I certainly see more of an opportunity in selling products, paid subscriptions, and being more reliant upon their own IP vs outside advertisers.

I’ve been scratching my head about what the big trends within the digital video and influencer marketing space will be in 2019. I have some theories…or one overarching theme rather.

Overall, I think 2019 will be a year of ‘Direct To Consumer’.

I’m not just talking about the rise of Direct To Consumer brands (which has already been a big trend over the last few years), but also Direct To Consumer when it comes to community building.

COMMERCE

As I outlined in a recent blog post, one noticeable commonality from Forbes List Of The Top 10 Highest-Paid YouTube Stars of 2018 was that all of the top 10 influencers had built businesses that live largely independent of traditional ad revenue or brand sponsorships. They’d all created brands and products they were selling to consumers vs relying upon ad revenue.

For years influencers have been creating merch, but until recently that portion of the business was relatively small as creators sought advertising dollars.

I can only imagine that other YouTubers and influencers will see the success of these more entrepreneurially minded creators and follow suit in hopes of replicating their success. There’s fewer obstacles than ever before for creators to sell direct to consumers – they can built up shopify sites within a few hours, outsource production of merch, and leverage their audience to generate the sales.

COMMUNITY

Every time a platform changes its algorithm creators are up in arms about how their livelihood is going to be adversely impacted (oftentimes rightfully so).

In response to the adpocolypse and de-monetization of content a number of creators saw their revenue cut by as much as 80%.

Facebook’s algorithm is continuously reducing earned exposure and according to one study there was a 50% decrease in overall engagement over 2017 and 2018.

These changes have a dramatic impact on businesses and wiped out several publishers.

Changes in algorithms have continued to create issues for creators. More and more have been looking to built up an audience that can live independent platform changes. We’ve seen creators experiment with apps and email marketing, but none of this has gained mass traction. I think all that is going to change this year.

In 2018 we saw Alex Jones get booted from every major social network (and even Apple’s podcast platform). Patreon booted YouTuber Sargon of Akkad.

While most creators would not identify with either Jones or Sargon as a comrade in arms – these high-profile ejections certainly must have a lot of creators wondering whether or not they too could be at risk of being de-platformed as well.

Creators need to own their audiences to build more stable businesses. As a result, I think this is the year we’ll see more businesses that allow creators to go direct to their fans.

I imagine we’ll see creators and companies experiment with everything from apps, to email marketing, text, direct mail and countless other alternatives.

I’m not convinced this means every big YouTuber is going to build a mobile app or become an email marketer. However, I do think that much in the same way the most successful creators have built businesses that are independent of ad dollars, so too will they cultivate their communities so as to not be solely at the mercy of platforms.

One traditional media company in particular stands out – Viacom. Viacom has a long, storied history with the space; they’d been suing Google over alleged copyright violations on YouTube from 2007-2014. As part of that suit Viacom had been seeking $1 billion dollars in damages, but was awarded no money as part of a settlement in 2014.

Now, four years later, Viacom seems to have done a 180 and fully embraces the digital video space (and YouTube in particular).

In the case of Viacom – waiting to make serious investments in the social video ecosystem seems to have allowed them to scoop up some serious deals.

Viacom acquired AwesomenessTV for a reported $50 million, a fraction of the company’s $650 million valuation back in 2016. This comes on the heels of Viacom having bought VidCon, the largest digital video conference/major influencer gathering.

And, at the very start of the year it was announced that Viacom had acquired WhoSay an influencer-marketing company that had raised $30 million and was incubated by CAA.

With these three acquisitions Viacom turned itself into a major player in the digital video ecosystem virtually overnight. They’ve got experiential, content, and marketing.

With VidCon they have the largest YouTube gathering. With Awesomeness they’ve got one of the largest MCN’s and production companies focused on the space, and with WhoSay they’ve got an established influencer marketing arm.

The timing of all this is interesting – YouTube is well over ten years old now, but I supposed it just goes to show that sometimes patience is a virtue.

It’s often easy to criticize the old guard for being slow, and lacking innovation (its something I’ve done constantly), but oftentimes methodical and deliberate can be mistaken for slow and out of touch.

What happened with IGTV?
What happened to brands becoming publishers?
How did brand safety continue to go unresolved?
What happened to Facebook watch?

There were a lot of great things within the social video world this year, and I’ll try and focus more on the positives in another post, but I can’t help but feel like 2018 was a year with few breakthroughs and really just an extension of the same issues we experienced in 2017.

This is the year that the hype began to fade around the ecosystem. Social video is no longer new. It’s no longer the shiny object and familiarity breeds contempt.

FACEBOOK FAILED TO DELIVER THE GOODS

In June of this year Instagram launched IGTV, a standalone app where users could upload hour long footage. Hyped as a YouTube killer the app has proved to be anything but, and as Techcrunch put it, “For IGTV, Instagram needs slow to mean steady.”

Creators touted onstage during the apps launch haven’t even embraced the platform, as NYMag recently documented, Lauren Riihimaki a.k.a. LaurDIY has just two IGTV both from June 20, the same day IGTV launched.

IGTV peaked at #25 overall in the US iPhone app store. According to SimilarWeb the app continues to fall and is currently ranked 36,226 in overall usage numbers.

To top it off Facebook Watch didn’t live up its ‘YouTube killer’ expectations either.

According to Digiday Facebook Watch is growing, but, “with less than 3.3 percent of Facebook’s 2.3 billion global users spending time on Watch, there’s still a ton of room to grow.”

This time last year I wrote a piece for Mashable titled ‘How Facebook Watch will overtake YouTube as the biggest video platform’. While its certainly feasible that Facebook Watch could grow into a serious YouTube competitor it certainly hasn’t happened yet. In that piece I wrote:

I predict Facebook will successfully leverage its network effect to create a better experience for advertisers, creators, and viewers, and ultimately put an end to YouTube’s decade-long position as the biggest video player. It’s not that YouTube will disappear. Instead, it will likely become marginalized much in the same way Snapchat and Twitter now live in Facebook’s shadow.

I was waaaay off the mark.

Today Facebook Watch is nowhere near the scale of YouTube (that’s not to say they can’t get there eventually, it just didn’t happen in 2018).

BRANDS AS PUBLISHERS IS… STILL TBD

For years one of the buzziest terms to be thrown around at any social media panel (right up there with ‘authentic’) was that brands need to become publishers.

The prediction was that in an era where people have unlimited access to content they’re never going to stick around to watch ads. As a result, to build a brand you need to BE the content publisher a la Red Bull.

This is something a lot of brands have paid lip service to, but few have successfully pulled off.

I point to Red Bull, GoPro, and most recently Marriott as the exceptions that prove the rule.

Ultimately, I don’t believe most traditional brands are able to overcome the internal logistical and cultural obstacles it takes to become a creative content company. Instead, I think the future of brands as publishers is likely to come from publishers (and influencers) who want to become brands.

If you look at the publishers and influencers that are sustaining (and growing) their businesses most of them have invested in products. Complex sold millions of dollars of Hot Sauce off the backs of their ‘Hot Ones’ YouTube series. All the top ten highest paid YouTube stars have built massive brands and product lines.

DEJA VU WITH BRAND SAFETY

Last year YouTube updated its policies which outlined they were going to take greater control over which videos can make money from ads. YouTube applied more rigorous (some would say frivolous) standards around what content was and was not brand safe.

At the time YouTube was under fire in the press for apparently running ads against objectionable content. As a result of the negative press a number of major advertisers boycotted spending money on the platform.

The initiative was dubbed the ‘Adpocolypse’ as creators saw much of their content de-monetized. Creators didn’t do themselves any favors — PewDiePie, the most subscribed YouTuber of all time was lambasted in the press for a prank in which he paid freelancers on Fiverr to create anti-semitic signs as a joke.

Jake Paul, came under fire by the press as well, for unapologetically plunging his neighborhood into chaos with his antics (as well documented by KTLA, the local LA news station).

This year PewDiePie continues to come under fire, most recently for accidentally promoting a white nationalist YouTube channel. Jake Paul continues to create controversy, but his older brother Logan Paul stole the spotlight and became infamous after filming, and then joking about, a dead man he found in a Japan’s ‘Suicide Forest’.

The tension between the creator community and YouTube came to a head recently.

YouTube Rewind 2018”, which is YouTube’s year end recap video featuring hundreds of creators and recapping the biggest moments from the year, was soundly rejected by the community and became the most downvoted YouTube video of all time.

The general consensus amongst the creator community on YouTube, was that they felt the video was pandering to advertisers, and ultimately failed to represent the ‘true’ YouTube community.

Clearly tensions are still high.

I don’t mean to diminish the achievements of these companies or the challenges they’re facing.

YouTube and Facebook are over ten years old. This space is no longer ‘new’ and the ‘wild west’ atmosphere has begun to dissipate.

We can’t expect groundbreaking changes each year.

At the advent of the automobile industry there were hundreds of manufacturers, but by the end of the 1920s it was dominated by three players: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. Things began to settle down and cars became commoditized, small improvements were made each year vs massive disruption.

I think that we’ve reached a period of time, within social video, that mirrors the 1920 automotive industry. We’re likely to see more small changes vs sweeping changes disrupting the ecosystem entirely going forward.

Where did things go wrong?

The role of MCN’s within the YouTube ecosystem has diminished, and many of them have disappeared altogether. Maker Studios, which was acquired by Disney for nearly a billion dollars has been shuttered. AwesomenessTV was sold for a fraction of its peak valuation and far less than the amount of money they raised.

While I’m not privy to the specifics of what happened at Defy, there are a few key factors that I think have contributed to MCN’s diminished role today.

LACK OF COMPETITIVE MOAT

MCN’s didn’t really have a huge competitive moat. At the end of the day MCN’s are basically ad networks rolled up into a central CMS. This allows the MCN’s to sell ads directly across channels. The issue here is that you can buy ads direct from YouTube in upfronts, and/or on auction. So, what’s the incentive to buy from a third party when you can go straight to the source for the same inventory? The reality is few MCN’s were able to sell their ad inventory to brands directly.

In a previous blog post, one talent manager was candid in saying that MCN’s didn’t really sell much ad inventory directly.

They rarely sell media, and there’s really no reason for a buyer to buy media from an MCN. Why should they when they can buy from Google directly. 

I feel like the MCNs are delivering value to a very, very small number of people in their network. And it doesn’t justify their business model. It would be a lot more honest if MCNs just called themselves what they were, which is a sales agency. The fact that MCNs have contracts that auto-renew without notifying the creative party is an indication of their awareness that they’re not delivering on their promise to creators.

In addition to selling ad inventory across channels most MCN’s also sold brand integrations within influencer content. The challenge here is that, for the most part, talent wasn’t exclusive to MCN’s on the branded content side of the business. Most top tier YouTube talent had managers, agents, and/or were signed with agencies (ie WME, UTA, or CAA) and countless others managed deals themselves.

OVERHEAD

A lot of MCN’s raised a lot of money. Awesomeness raised $162.5 million, Maker raised $65 million… the list goes on.

Although these companies were referred to as MCN’s in the marketplace many of them were expanding to countless other businesses and took on massive overhead in the process. Fullscreen launched a short-lived OTT platform. Awesomeness diversified beyond YouTube and expanded into music, movies, and even book publishing – they spread themselves very thin trying to do a lot of things that never panned out.

In addition to expanding beyond their core competency numerous MCN’s invested in signing the ‘top tier’ YouTube talent in upfront deals, which were not cheap. Then to recoup costs these MCN’s had to hire teams of sales people to sell brand deals for that talent (which oftentimes never came to fruition).

According to one talent manager the only reason top YouTubers join MCN’s is “because of minimum guarantee deals. That’s it… it’s free money. The MCN’s guarantees that the creator will make X amount in integration deals over the course of the term. And, if the MCN doesn’t deliver that amount in brand deals, then the MCN writes a check.”

Doling out ‘free money’ to talent that does nothing in return is hardly a sustainable business model.

RESENTMENT

Over the years there has been a lot of public backlash against MCN’s and this could not have helped when MCN’s go to sign on new creators. Also, smaller creators who were handing over a percentage of their revenue to MCN’s often felt taken advantage of. As a result, this new generation of creators seems far more cautious when it comes to joining MCN’s and are increasingly choosing to go it alone.

YouTube drama is commonplace these days, but in the early days of YouTube it was rare for YouTubers to air their grievances to the public. That all changed when in 2012 Ray William Johnson slammed Maker Studios claiming they were withholding money from him and holding his adsense account hostage. The drama went on for months between he and then Maker CEO Danny Diamond. Just over a year later when Maker was sold to Disney Danny ended up suing Disney as well as his former business partners. The whole ordeal painted MCN’s in a negative light and MCN’s were always looked at much more skeptically.

In the early days joining an MCN was a badge of having ‘made it’ in the YouTube world. Initially MCN’s where small and catered to the top talent. Over time this exclusivity gave way for a desire to scale and it was a landgrab to acquire talent. As a result you saw companies like Maker have 500 employees, but tens of thousands of channels, Awesomeness averaged 200+ channels for every employee. As a result, talent was largely left underserviced and many felt taken advantage of.

In one interview with an MCN executive, he confirmed that many YouTubers who joined MCN’s felt underwhelmed by their services, stating that:

“You see that same kind of conversations happening around MCNs. You have creators who say, “Hey, I’m giving you anywhere from 0-30% of my ad revenue, are you giving me that value in return?” A lot of creators don’t feel like they’re getting that value in return.”

As a result of so many creators complaining about wanting to get out of their MCN contracts YouTube rolled out a policy in 2013 making it much easier for YouTube Creators to get out of their MCN contracts.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all MCN’s don’t have viable business or that they’re all ripping off their talent. There are a lot of smart, talented, and moral people within the space. However, it does seem as though the heyday of MCN’s is largely passed.

So what does this mean for MCN’s?

As I outlined in a previous post, I think if MCN’s are to survive – the ones that will thrive and be successful are those that cater to specific niches and can actually sign enough of a small group of talent to own key verticals as well as properly service their talent.

This is not something I thought that I’d ever write. Shane wasn’t always a phenomenal filmmaker/documentarian. Shane once represented the negative stereotype of a YouTube creator – making clickbaity content (ie Dog Herpes, Death By Cinnamon Challenge, and I’m Britney Spears Gyno, etc).

The type of content Shane (and countless others like him) created is the reason that YouTube launched a coordinated effort to brand the platform as a more premium, brand friendly, destination in 2012. The platform began to prioritize ‘watch time’ as the primary metric – all in an effort to place an emphasis on quality and recruit advertisers.

YouTube stated in their own blog regarding the changes that the “discovery features were previously designed to drive views. This rewarded videos that were successful at attracting clicks, rather than the videos that actually kept viewers engaged. (Cleavage thumbnails, anyone?).”

Folks like Shane Dawson were the black sheep of the YouTube family, and the algorithm (as I see it) was meant to choke the air out of their lifeline of views.

A lot of creators have struggled to adapt to this new YouTube ecosystem – Shane too experienced a slump in views for a time.

However, Shane has managed to evolve and adapt – clickbait videos seem to be a thing of the past, and as a result he’s thriving more than ever. In July of this year Shane generated over 189 million views vs 90 million for the same month last year, and he gained over one million new subscribers (vs 250K in July of last year).

It is important to note that more than simply understanding the algorithm Shane has become a phenomenal filmmaker. He’s not creating longer videos that are more of the same. His focus is long form documentary style, multi-episode series and pointing a spotlight on the personalities within YouTube in a way that only someone with his access can. His videos are shockingly bing-worthy (I’ve found myself checking my subscriber feed every hour hoping to see a new upload from his Jeffree Star series).

In a recent series YouTuber ‘Graveyard Girl’ joked about Shane being her “Dr. Phil” – I think that’s selling him short. Shane is now the Oprah of YouTube (with a touch of Howard Stern). He’s self-deprecating, which makes him endearing and approachable – sharing his own issues with his sexuality, insecurity with how he looks, his battles with eating disorders.

While YouTube may have changed their algorithm in response to creators like Shane – it had the unintended consequence of challenging him as a filmmaker and pushing him to pursue excellence. I can’t imagine they would have ever envisioned the Shane Dawson of 2012 becoming one of the most celebrated filmmakers in 2018.

Myself and millions of other viewers are grateful for this new Shane and better YouTube.

Would you rather have one foot in the past or one in the future?

It’s true that, from the looks of it, Cannes is much more fun – you won’t find anyone popping bottles of champagne on a yachs atVidCon. Instead, you’re far more likely to find a few digital influencers, forward thinking brands, agencies, and talent managers huddling around cups of StarbucksCcoffee in some hotel lobby hammering out a few deals.

That said,VidCon is at the epicenter of what is happening within influencer marketing, social media as a whole, and more importantly – what is happening with culture. Digital influencers are the most recognizable celebrities among teens today, becoming a digital influencer is the most desirable job amongst teens today, and the most engaged athlete online is now an E-Sports athlete, the Twitch Streamer, Ninja.

I personally take pride in the fact that while other agencies send execs to the South of France to hear talks, such as ‘What is Innovation”  myself and my team are on the ground working and meeting with influencers at VidCon.

VidCon is where innovation is happening – even the major platforms understand this and make major announcements there. For example, this year Instagram waited until the first day of VidCon to launch IGTV (instead of doing it during the peak of Cannes). Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube also followed suit making a variety of announcements around platform updates, features, and partnerships onsite atVidCon.

Looking at the ad trades you’ll see that brands and agencies are struggling to capture eyeballs. Ad formats are shrinking and advertisers are having trouble even watching a 6 second ad. Marc Pritchard, the CMO of P & G stated that they “stopped wasting money on 30-second ads, and we’re designing ads to work in 2 seconds,” and that “it is time for marketers and tech companies to solve the problem of annoying ads and make the ad experience better for consumers,”

I agree with Marc that marketers need to solve the problem for annoying ads – but, the reality is the solution exists, and I think if he and his team spent more time immersing themselves inVidCon, and the ecosystem as a whole they’d have the answer already. While P&G is struggling to get ads to work in 2 seconds, people are watching influencer content that is as much as 6 hours long.

According to recent studies long form video content consumption is up 30% over 2017. The #1 Most subscribed YouTuber (PewDiePie) regularly posts 20 min long videos, and the most downloaded podcasts are all well over 45 minutes on average (with some top podcasters like Joe Rogan going as long as three hours).

Clearly attention span isn’t the issue – most advertisers are just not great at creating content and putting it in front of the right consumers.

My team and I at Epic Signal certainly don’t bat 1000, but getting past two seconds is fucking terrible and certainly the exception rather than the rule. Instead, by having an understanding of these platforms, how to work with influencers, and integrate paid media – we’ve seen fifteen minute long pieces of branded content generate 75% completion rates. On a recent campaign with Boost Mobile we integrated influencers into paid social (in addition to having them create their own branded content) and beat the previous CPA benchmark by 50%. The list goes on.

This success comes from us investing a lot of time with these platforms, ingratiating ourselves in influencer communities, attending events likeVidCon (and a lot of trial and error).

I say this not to brag, but to point out that much of the industry is still caught up in the gigantic circle jerk of trying to impress one another with champagne and yachts – resulting in an inability to communicate with consumers.

Just like anything else you’ve got to put in your ten thousand hours – that means spending a little less money on champagne, Rosé, and yachts in France. Instead, why not invest in listening to people who are able to get millions of fans to hang on their every word for hours on end, like you can at VidCon?

End of rant

Some of the major points we covered were:

• Subscription video on demand (SVOD) and YouTube competitors
• YouTubers “making it” on television
• YouTuber revenue streams
• How much money his top creators are making in a year
• How creators can better work with brands, and vice versa

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies, and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space — the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’ve been on YouTube for a very long time. How did you first get started?

I got started back in 2009, and I got started because I actually went to high school with another YouTuber. He’s still got pretty large following to this day.

I saw what he was doing and how we was building a community around himself. It seemed like a huge opportunity. So I started working with him a bit, and I was introduced to other creators and collaborate with them. I was able to turn YouTube into a career in about three months.

How has the community evolved since those early days?

What was really interesting about the early days is that once you hit a certain number of subscribers you were immediately part of the community. People had a sense of respect for you and vice versa. Once you hit that level, you could really approach just about anyone and do collaborations, or just strike up conversations and friendships.

As this community of a few thousand people exploded into the millions of creators you now have today, a bunch of micro-communities developed. Now, it’s like everybody sticks to their own clique. It’s almost like high school. So if you’re a beauty guru, you collaborate with other beauty gurus and you don’t really step outside that.

There’s just not as much cross-pollination as there once was.

I think a lot of the playfulness has disappeared as well. Now, we jump onto each new platform – push our audiences to them (the platforms), and then immediately we ask, “How do we monetize this?”

Speaking of fans, you’ve got a sizable following. What’s it like having fans?

It’s actually really interesting. I rarely use the word “fans,” I’ve allowed myself to use it as of late. This is something that I and a lot of my other YouTube friends struggle with.

We want to be humble, but also want to be respected in the same way that Hollywood celebrities are respected and perceived.  

Do you want to be put on the same pedestal as “traditional” celebrities?

Being labeled as a “celebrity” pigeonholes YouTubers because you can be recognizable without being a “celebrity.” I think it goes beyond celebrity. I think it’s about being a public figure.

There’s a new generation of influence sprouting up as a result of social media. You have people that may be an entertainer-creator or maybe they’re a body-positive influencer. There’s people with influence across spheres — politics, entertainment — you can be an influencer around anything now.

Whatever name we end up giving this new type of public figure, I think they are definitely going to be held to a higher esteem and value than they are today.

How has the perception and attitude towards YouTubers changed among brands and agencies?

The marketers have done a lot to catch up these last few years and they value what we do a lot more.

They’re beginning to recognize that we influencers are not a simple plug-and-play, where they can just say “Let’s put our bag of chips in this,” or “Let’s give them a bottle of water.”

They’re starting to take a step back and invite us in as collaborators. They’re asking what excites us and what ideas we have. It’s becoming a bit more of a conversation than it used to be.

Also, it’s interesting — as demand has increased, you see influencers being represented by four or five different managers and talent agencies. You don’t quite see that in the traditional talent world.

The fact that an influencer can be so freely represented and not be limited to one representative shows me that in some ways the influencer has more negotiating power than traditional celebrities.

I hear from a lot of the creators that “brands don’t get it.” To your point, and in my own experience, it seems as though brands are “getting it” more and more. Do you feel like creators are doing more to adapt and empathize with the brand’s perspective?

Yes and no. You and I have known each other over the years, we’ve seen people come and go.

For the most part, the ones that we’ve seen go are the ones that didn’t develop much business etiquette, or, even just the willingness to put aside some of their stubbornness to be open to some of those brand conversations and feedback.

The ones that have stayed around have been able to have conversations. They don’t just say no to an idea, they offer up solutions.

You have to be able to adapt and work towards a solution where everyone is happy with what they’re getting. It’s only a success if the creator is happy, the audience is happy, AND the brand is happy.

Some creators not willing to put forth the effort, and aren’t open to ideas or build off of ideas that are not their own.

Are you still with an MCN or are you independent?

All my channels are within different MCNs.

The deals I’ve structured are different than what most creators get. They’re in my favor more so than most of the contracts that these MCNs have with the 40,000 other people who signed with them.

What advice would you give to an up and coming creator? What kind of things would you advise them to keep an eye out for?

The first thing to keep in mind is that you’ve got a lot more negotiating power and leverage than you think.

In some cases I get 100% of my revenue. Oftentimes the MCNs will try to offer a revenue split over a certain amount of views. They say, “Hey, look, we did our math and over the last 12 months you averaged out this amount of views. We’ll do a rev-share split of this amount of views over your average amount of views.”

I say no to that because the last 12 months doesn’t mean anything to me. The last three months are going to be the most important numbers to me. And when you go down that math, you’re not going to come to an agreement.

I would also say if you’re going in with an MCN or any other company, you should do it with the idea of getting them to invest in you and your content (whether with upfronts or production support). By having them support you in creating more content, they’ll be invested in your success.

Also, limit your deal to no more than a year in length. Lastly, make sure you’re not just joining

for brand deals. Brand deals are great but you can get multiple managers and agents to represent you to get you those deals.

Where do you see the future of YouTube going? How do you juggle all these different platforms, and does YouTube have staying power?

I feel that YouTube is going to have staying power because of its massive library of content.

Facebook doesn’t have that much content, and I’m not sure if they are ever going to have it.

I think Facebook is similar to what YouTube was back in 2005-2009 — there are a lot more amateur videos and far fewer professional creator videos. YouTube on the other hand has really matured, and is closer to Netflix in the sense that the content has really developed and become more professional.

I feel that YouTube Red is a step in the right direction. And honestly, I think video platforms are going to evolve across the board between Twitter and Snapchat and everything else. We’re going to see different platforms cater to different types of content. I may go to Facebook one day to find a new viral video, but I’ll got to YouTube Red to watch something from a premier independent creator.

How do you as a content creator juggle all of these new platforms? How do you decide where to invest your time and develop an audience?  

It’s actually really natural.

I produce my content with the idea of being able to repurpose it for different platforms. So if it goes up on YouTube, it’s going to go up on Facebook. If it’s going to go up on Instagram it can go up on Vine.

Getting that content distributed across each platform isn’t really hard. I play around with each for a bit and figure out what works.

I took a great deal of interest in Facebook over a year ago and I played around with my content there and it did pretty well. Now I’m playing around with Instagram and it’s doing well there too.

I think people are thinking of their audience as being on every platform. The reality is that if it’s on YouTube, put it up on Facebook too. Put it up on Instagram. Put it up on everything you can. Do a quick edit and cut it down a little bit. Do whatever it takes. The amount of time that you’re going to put into repurposing and customizing content for each platform is going to show a return.

What’s the formula for success on YouTube? What does it take to build a successful channel?

It’s a combination of having fun and being logical. Everything I’ve ever done had to excite me and that doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t get frustrated with it or I wanted to not do it at some point. You’re going to have speed bumps. But I was very excited to start. Very inspired. And I was very logical. I asked myself, “Okay, how much time am I putting into this? How much money am I putting into this? If this was money, how much money is this of my time? And how quick of a return can I get off of this?”

So when you go from being a personality on camera to investing into content and putting a team behind it, the decisions you make are all about ROI.

So I would say, if you want to be successful, do what you love but put some logic behind it. Put some business sense behind it.

Anything else to add?

The one thing that I will say that I’ve noticed over the years within this industry is that publicly we all say, “Yeah, everything’s all great and dandy.” But, privately you turn to your friend and you’re like, “F this. This does not make sense. This is so stupid. This is terrible. This is horrible.”

We’re all having these private conversations with each other, but we’re afraid to have them openly because we think we’re going to make people feel bad or it’s going to turn into some sort of World War III.

 We covered a number of topics including:

• How Youtube’s relationship with creators has evolved
• The massive growth of the YouTube partner program
• YouTube’s relationship with MCN’s

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

———

A lot of people are confused about how hands-on YouTube does and does not want to be with creators. How hands on are they?

There were three critical moments in YouTube’s approach to creator relationships. Pre-2010, there weren’t too many interactions with creators.

2012 was a pivotal time. It’s when brands started to seriously invest into digital media, MCNs started to gain legitimacy, and YouTube made a million different bets and hundreds of millions of dollars. It was like, “We want to enable these YouTube-enabled businesses, we are fine with people intermediating.”

2014 and 2015 was the most material shift, where YouTube was like: “Holy shit, we are losing the thing that made us special and we will put humans as well as dollars behind getting that relationship back.”

So that’s where they are now. YouTube is on the defensive because a) they’re saying that because of MCNs, agents and managers have been further intermediated, and b) they’re nervous because of competing platforms like Facebook Video.

Going to the MCNs, what sparked you guys jumping in to address the affiliate and the managed?

The origin of direct and manage came from naturally the evolution of the MCNs.

MCNs were born out of feature arbitration. The partner program was important at the time because not only could you monetize, but you would also agree on certain features like custom thumbnails and custom banners. In the early days if you weren’t one of the YouTubers hand selected by YouTube to be a part of the partner program then you had to join MCNs to get these things.

This is the house that divided YouTube, where half of us were pro-creator. The other half was like: “No, we actually need to enable these MCNs to continue to thrive.” But if you look at the numbers it wouldn’t have mattered. Maker Studios would love to believe that they hold 10 percent of traffic for YouTube globally. They don’t, it’s less than two percent. If they left, they wouldn’t do shit.

Was there pressure within YouTube to kind of prop up the MCNs to a certain extent?

In a way. We got rid of their ability to feature arbitrage and were forced to create real value-added services. This is when you start to see them invest in real sales team, production houses and so forth. It’s because we forced their hand. Because we took their dependency on shit they should have never depended on.

Do you think they’ve done enough to provide value to creators?

It depends. For the larger ones that are highly scaled, do they provide the value they should? No. They never have. Talk to any creator and you will get that response.

My thoughts on MCNs are generally negative. It’s a questionable value they provide across the board, certainly on ongoing basis. In my opinion, all of them were saved by the big media companies who needed a digital play and just don’t understand shit. But, am I happy, in hindsight, that they did exist in some fashion and that we are validated…yeah. It was worth it. But do I think they are useful, in reality? No.

Could you talk at all about the growth of the partner program?

Initially the partner program was small – an ever growing group of hand selected creators. In 2011, we took it from 33 thousand people to 4 million. Now, when you fast forward to today, the partner program doesn’t really exist. And that’s by design. We made a super-conscious decision to move away from the notion of partner because it was brand inconsistent with YouTube, and we didn’t philosophically like the idea of a non-democratic platform.

We wanted to enable anyone to turn creativity into a career. And what that practically meant is anyone can use certain features and programs, anyone can have a deep relationship with YouTube, depending on performance. It wasn’t demarcated by the relationship you have with your MCN or otherwise.

We did this to scale monetization and as a result brought in 50 percent more revenue. Even though most of the channels we enabled monetization for were tiny, it mattered because of how big the platform is.

When YouTube opened up the partner program to the masses did CPM’s lower?

The CPM’s did start lowering. However, around that time another factor came into the picture that had a way bigger impact on the creator’s bottom lines.

In 2012 we launched Watch Time as guiding algorithm of YouTube. As a result, a lot of people who did click-baity stuff suffered. I remember overnight a lot of channels lost 50% of their viewership.

What was the impact of the Partner Program to YouTube’s bottom line?

By opening up monetization to more and more people YouTube has generated billions in revenue. In 2011, after we began scaling the partner program, we grew revenue 50%. This was in spite of the fact that most of the channels we enabled monetization for were tiny. That’s how big the platform was (and is today).

The addition of monetization of more of the long-tail helped us generate $400 million dollars, which that year, in 2011, was a third of all of YouTube’s revenue.