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.

We covered a number of topics including:
-How the platform & money has changed the ecosystem
-What it was like working with MCN’s
-Why he left YouTube and got burnt out on the platform

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.

What got you into YouTube?

I started my channel after getting absorbed by the first Call of Duty scene for sniping videos on YouTube. Highlight reels of playing CoD and using sniper rifles and stumbling upon the commentary scene which only had three big YouTubers in it.

I remember at the time the largest CoD YouTuber in the world who had 25,000 followers and thinking to myself: “Wow, this is the best guy on YouTube, the biggest guy on YouTube,” and also thinking “This guy talks a lot about his life.” It really seemed that everybody was going to these videos to learn, not for the personalities. It was on that premise that I started my channel and ran it for about two and a half years.

What was it like when you first got momentum? What was your reaction?

It was a cool experience for me because my fellow CoD YouTubers became my best friends, literally. For two years, my best friends were all other CoD YouTubers who I would Skype with and play with, occasionally. And the feeling was very much being a part of this giant Internet community where people listened to what you were saying and viewed you as a leader. That just felt really great to be recognized for.

What was your experience like joining [Redacted – Name of MCN]?

At the time, the coolest thing that I felt had ever happened to me was being contacted by them. I was excited to make money from it because I started thinking, “Wow, this could be a job,” and knowing that I get about 60,000 views a day that’d be a hundred dollars a day. And I was in eleventh grade at the time.

The money was cool, but it was also so cool to have that recognition because of what that MCN was at the time. It was like a badge of honor. Then it all changed. All MCN models, or at least that MCN’s model moved to quantity over quality.

Why did you leave that network?

I wanted to speak with the ad sales team and work with them one-on-one. I thought that would be the best way to make brand partnerships — the creators recommending types of brands and types of branded content they wanted to do to the ad sales team, who would create decks around that and sell them. They got me in a meeting with the head of ad sales. I pitched to him for 30 minutes and the look on his face was like, “Why am I talking to this guy?”

They just didn’t seem to respect what we were doing that much or treat us like we were what made them big. It really came down to me wanting more brand deals than anything else. And from brands I cared about. I was one of the biggest gaming channels at the time, I was a top 100 YouTuber, and I barely saw any brand deals or any cool opportunities.

Do you feel like your experiences and the way you got into the community is similar to a lot of others? As an introvert using the platform to express yourself?

I would actually hypothesize that being an introvert leads you to be more interested in gaming and more engaged in those communities rather than it being a casual thing.

How do you feel the YouTube and gaming community as a whole has evolved over the years?

The gaming scene started out being a little personality-based…when YouTubers were doing half advice, half talking about their lives. Then YouTubers like myself shifted the community to be all about learning, whether it was advice about multiplayer, zombies or tricks, Easter eggs, those sort of things.

Soon around the time that I left, a lot of things shifted over to being more personality-based as YouTubers got so big that people wanted to see more of the behind-the-scenes stuff. You see this with the Let’s Play community, which quickly became the dominant category on YouTube. I remember the interest in my channnel and a lot of other gamers clearly dropped when people started getting 10 to 70 million views a month on videos of them playing little internet games that were really quirky, not really great mechanics or long-term appeal, but reacting to the game made for super entertaining content.

What about the injection of all the money? What do you think the impact of that has been?

It changed how a lot of brands are constructed to be businesses as much as they are brands. I respect it and I think the viewer ends up winning most of the time, because that person can put so much more time into making awesome content.

Anything else you want to say?

I was talking to my friend who leads a lot of influencer stuff about how incredibly powerful some partnerships between brands and influencers can be. And I think his point speaks to the creativity and deep understanding that YouTubers have of the YouTube content space that I think is underappreciated.

I think a lot of YouTubers have really, really cool ideas that they can act on, ranging from games to short films to businesses that would work. A lot of brands that don’t know what to do with creators could benefit from starting conversations with them.

We covered a lot of ground and dove into some juicy topics, including:
-The process of working with brands and creators
-The role MCN’s currently play with his talent
-Media sales
-The future of 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.

What’s it like working with brands and creators?
I think that it’s fun because people are getting a bit more used to what a YouTube integration campaign looks like. There’s not as many questions as there used to be.

That being said, there is still is a lot of education that’s occurring on a daily basis and sometimes we as managers are educating the people who are bringing us the deals, because all they want are the impressions and the views and they don’t understand that it’s a fine line that needs to be walked. If they are too heavy-handed, they’re going to defeat the purpose that they’re trying to achieve.

Where are most of your brand deals being sourced from?
I get deals from all over- MCNS, PR companies, ad agencies, and brand direct. What role do the MCNs play in the ecosystem for you with your talent?

They’re just a sales agency at this point. They definitely don’t manage any talent, nor should they because there’s an obvious conflict of interest. MCNs will always do what’s best for them not what’s best for the talent. They’re not trying to nurture careers and look at long-term effects of what actions will have on creators, because their end game is squeezing out as much profit as possible.

The talent is a commodity to MCNs.

Do the MCN’s sell the media for any of for your talent?
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.

Why else would they be reluctant to notify the party that their contract’s up for renewal?
If you’re confident in the service you’re providing, you’re never hesitant to let the other party know that it’s up for renewal. Why would you be? It’s professional courtesy.

How does your talent feel about being in an MCN?
Most are indifferent. Some want out of their contracts and be independent.

So, where do you think the MCNs are headed?
MCNs are waging a propaganda campaign where they’re telling all these ad agencies that they have relationships with creators that are exclusive, when they’re not. They’re not even remotely exclusive.

They say that they alone know how to handle campaigns with creators, when they could just go directly to the talent handlers. If an MCN brings me a deal for my clients, I’ll definitely do it if it’s right. But I think it would just be better for everybody if they were more honest about the role they play.

What role is YouTube playing these days in terms of the relationships of talent?
They’re trying to increase their role. YouTube’s so big, YouTube’s so vast, and the fact that it’s so vast affects how it interacts with talent.

If you’re a network, a television network, and you’ve got basically half-hour slots, Monday through Sunday, 24 hours a day, there’s only so many people that can be on air. But if you’re a website, and anyone who can upload anything can be successful, anytime, it just creates this very unwieldy landscape. It’s hard to manage and have impactful relationships.

Why do you think they bother trying to cultivate real relationships?
Most likely because of YouTube Red. Google’s always thinking a few steps ahead.

YouTube Red is going to be a challenge for them. It’s a bit nebulous what it is at the moment and paywalls are so fucking weird. If you set one up you better give me a solid reason that I can remember as to why you did it. But if it’s just so I can download content, I’m not sure that it’s worth it.

What do you think I haven’t covered off on that people should know about? What’s the juicy topic you want to talk about?
I would say it’s really that MCNs are really exploitative and don’t deliver on their value promise. And that people should know that, creators should stop joining and stop renewing their contracts.

Why do you think they are joining?
The top ones are joining just 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.

Thanks you for your time!

My latest interviewee for The Confessional is a senior advertising agency executive who’s worked on the media and strategy side of the business for over a decade. In this extensive interview, we discussed how the ecosystem has evolved, how much advertisers have (and have not) adapted to working with digital influencers, as well as the newfronts and its role in influencing the flow of ad dollars.

Some of the major points we covered were:

• How the ecosystem has changed over the years
• The best ways to work with creators
• The role of Brandcast and the digital newfronts

How has the space changed since you got started nearly a decade ago?
The biggest change is probably the money.

I remember when I first got started it was hard to get clients onboard with the idea of even paying for YouTubers to create content around their brand. Everything was so siloed back then and, more often than, not they thought of YouTubers as PR and PR should be free.

It was really fucking dumb. Brands would pay millions of dollars in production and media for an agency to create content, but wouldn’t spend any money at all on a YouTuber who actually had a massive audience.

Do you feel like the process of working with YouTubers is more defined today?
It’s getting better. It’s certainly a lot more accepted to work with YouTubers, Viners, Instagrammers, etc. That said, I think a lot of the agencies, creatives in particular, real look down upon a lot of the influencers. There’s a certain arrogance that a lot of agencies have when it comes to anything involving creative.

Regarding, how to work with creators – it’s not really defined. Anyone can work with them any number of ways. The media agencies sometimes do buys and sell through branded content done by influencers as part of the package. Creative agencies and PR agencies sometimes carve out this space as being their domain. It’s not uncommon for brands to have direct relationships.

Also, the way to reach creators to work with them is a clusterfuck. You have MCN’s, talent managers, traditional talent agencies, and the creators themselves all negotiating deals. There’s a huge dogpile at times that creates a lot of confusion.

In your experience, what’s the best way to work with creators?
It depends, there are some great mediators out there who really add value – whether that be a talent manager, MCN account manager, or whatever. It really varies person to person.

However, it never hurts to have at least some access to the source – the creator. That allows you to have a better feel for who you’re working with and what they are and are not receptive to.

The NewFronts are coming up this week – as an advertiser, what’s your take on that?
The NewFronts is the ultimate industry circle jerk.

Upfronts was something created from the Mad Men era when there was limited ad inventory and you had to work with people face to face. None of that is relevant today.

I can buy media cheaper by NOT dealing with the publishers than I can by dealing with them directly. It’s insane. There’s more inventory than anyone knows what to deal with. Why are we, as advertisers, paying a premium? That premium goes to pay for salespeople, bloated organizations and events like those held at the NewFronts.

As a vendor, I totally understand why you’d do the NewFronts. However, brands and their media agencies should be smarter, but they’re not. Why should they be? They can go and be wined and dined by potential partners and then spend the brand’s money. There’s no real accountability to work harder and smarter within a lot of these organizations… in fact, if anything a lot of them are so rigid in their processes you’re better off (career wise) to play it safe and not stick your neck out.

What about YouTube’s Brandcast?
Brandcast is really more of the same. I’d say they do a better job than most in putting on a show and providing tangible insights to help convince advertisers to shift more dollars to YouTube, so in that sense it is good.

However, typically, YouTube is trying to dumb down their offerings for their audience. Once again, I’m not blaming them or the publishers. They’re all REALLY smart to continue to do these events. It’s the brands and media agencies that are dragging their feet that make these events necessary.

Want to get more brands to buy on YouTube? Sell it like TV, like they did with Google Preferred. How fucking insane is that? You need to make things more inefficient to help pull these decision makers into the 21st century. Fucking drives me nuts.

What’s your take on all the attention and ad dollars that have gone into promoting the creators over the years?
Once again – it’s taking an old school approach and applying it to this new medium.

Want to get advertisers to invest in branded content with YouTube stars? Put them on a billboard.

That’s kind of crazy when you think about it. The fact that they were reaching 10 million people wasn’t enough? Fuck. Do you not do any research whatsoever about the media habits of your target?

Any parting thoughts?
Everyone follows the money. If brands evolved and really changed their processes and how they chose work with creators and agencies this could be a much more exciting industry than it is today.

Today, it’s hard to push innovative work through. I don’t think it should be easy, but I don’t think it should be this hard.

So much of this industry is based on legacy relationships and ways of working. These major brands are going to disappear in a few years if they can’t adapt. I genuinely believe that Fortune 500 companies will disappear if they can’t change the way they spend their ad dollars. TV isn’t impactful enough. You’ve got upstarts spending pennies on the dollar in digital to get way more impact.

Brands need to stay hungry and adapt if they want to survive the next few decades.