Who gains as premium content moves from YouTube to OTT?

YouTube received the first blow when it lost shows from general entertainment channels in India and across the world as they developed their own OTT/VOD apps. And now, the otherwise popular video platform, which was initially independent content creators' stepping stones to success, is no more their first choice to put premium content.

A few cases in point here are Pocket Aces opting Netflix to launch the second season of its most popular web series ‘Little Things’; TVF taking its very famous web series Tripling to SonyLiv, MX Player and TVFPlay for season 2 and GoQuest Digital Studios choosing YuppTV for Volkswagen Ameo Cup series.

With this gradual shift, the content creators are getting better revenues from OTT players for their premium content. As they continue to use YouTube for their content with the objective of sharability or promoting their premium content, the platform has remained relevant except the loss of premium content, audience and revenues coming from them.

The major visible loss for YouTube is that it created strong competition in the form of major OTT players like Hotstar, Voot, Zee5, AltBalaji, SonyLiv while the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime are growing stronger.

So finally, what value is this shift adding to all parties?

Karan Chaudhry, President and COO, The Viral Fever, feels that here the overall ecosystem is gaining from this shift. “OTT is gaining because they have a long-term perspective. When Netflix was started, nobody thought it would be a $200 billion company. OTT platforms with a good content strategy will win in the long run. YouTube is not going down. There are thousands of creators who come every day and want to become serious creators of the future. When some players will start getting a dominant position, the industry will see consolidation.”

The gaining parties are the content creators today, said Darshan Bhatt, Director, India, South East Asia, Africa and Middle East, GoQuest Digital Studios. However, Bhatt believes OTT players have an upper hand over YouTube when it comes to long-form content.

Content is the winner according to Kumar Deb Sinha of Country Head, Dentsu Story Labs. “Finally what will happen is that the content will get the real value. Until now, the value was completely borne by the creator. They were bearing losses in creating content. Now they are getting some good money from OTT players. But I don’t think they will pull the plug from YouTube completely.”

Saransh Agarwal, who leads content strategy and business for Flux (Content division of The Glitch), believes that it’s a mutually beneficial situation.

“Creators are finding platforms which are helping them create far better content with far higher revenue. On the other hand, creators are enabling OTTs to build non-Bollywood, relatable localised content, which the urban Indian craves for. This audience is the lowest hanging fruit for subscription-based content consumption. So it’s hard to say whether OTT platforms or creators are making more of this trend,” he said, concluding that the definite winner though is the Indian consumer.