Youtube for Home Chefs
It’s 2005. Three unassuming Paypal employees. One small office on rent. The arid town of San Mateo, California.
Jawed Karim, one of the 3 founders, hits ‘upload’ on an unassuming video titled “Me at the zoo”. Cut to: the year’s end where YouTube is now hosting over 2 million videos a day & averaging at over 20 million daily active users (DAU).
Safe to say that YouTube needs no introduction. Acquired by Google in 2006 for 1.65 billion dollars, YouTube ran with a singular vision: to give every individual a voice and show them the world. In 2022, YouTube has the most active users in India from around the world, estimated at 467 million.
Facts about youtube:-
- YouTube has 2.6 Billion monthly active users.
- YouTube has 113.9 M YouTube channels as of July 29, 2022.
- YouTube has surpassed 50M Premium subscribers, including trailers.
- India had the largest YouTube audience with more than 467 M people in January 2022.
- Most optimized length of the video is 7–14 minutes where creators get almost 50% of engagement.
- An average youtube video length is 11.7 Minutes and if we take an assumption that youtube’s average ad frequency is after 5–8 minutes of video, then the average youtube video shows 2–3 ads.
What does YouTube offer?
- Content from large brands & studios to famous content creators and even regular people who are subject matter experts/hobbyists in certain topics.
- A super easy, clean and fast UI/UX experience along with the convenience of access from across a multitude of devices.
- An amazing recommendation engine that sucks users into watching YouTube videos even if they logged in to just listen to music while working.
- Lots of opportunities to learn new skills from the best minds on the planet & up skill themselves.
- Loads of entertainment from watching live game streaming to music and even snippets of stand-up comedy, TV Shows & Movies.
💰 YouTube’s Business Model & Monetisation Levers
YouTube’s engagement metrics are critical to enabling its business model. The prime sources of revenue are
- 📢 Advertising: YouTube’s PRIMARY source of revenue; By dedicated inventory & real estate such as mastheads, pre-rolls, bumpers, etc.
- 👑 YouTube Premium: Subscription-based model where users bypass ads (and also get additional services like YouTube Music).
- 💸 Creator Super-chats: Ardent fans of creators can choose to send money to their favorite creators (revenue sharing with Creators)
- 🤝 Channel Memberships: Exclusive Content for paid subscribers of specific channels (revenue sharing with Creators)
- 👕 MerchShelf: YouTube creates inventory for the creator to showcase merchandise. (revenue sharing with Creators).
The Natural Frequency of the Core Product
With the core product being consuming long-form videos, the natural frequency is as follows:
Casual
- WatchTime: 15–20 minutes (per day)
- Frequency: 1–5 Video
- Premium: No
Average
- WatchTime: 30–60 minutes (per day)
- Frequency: 5–15 Videos
- Premium: Maybe
Power
- WatchTime: 120+ minutes (per day)
- Frequency: 15+ videos
- Premium: Yes
Youtube’s Advertiser monetization strategy:
Targeted towards “Power users with high watch time but low paying capacity.”
Perceived value (what are they getting)
- Money: Measured CTR on ads and eventual conversion from this channel
- Access: Access to 122 million pairs of eyeballs every day watching 1 billion hours of content every day.
Typical CTR on YT ads = 0.6% or approx 800k click-throughs per day
Perceived Price
- Money (significant): ~ INR 2 CPV
- Time (insignificant)
What is important to users:-
Value Prop: YouTube provides a wide variety of videos in different genres, people can use it unlimited either by watching ads or by subscribing to premium for a seamless experience.
Time: To save their time from watching ads in which they are not interested. It is told to users how much time they can save and have additional benefits by subscribing to YouTube premium.
Dopamine: For providing them with a seamless experience and making them happy. Youtube gave up ‘X’ amount of revenue in return for the ‘amount they paid’ by removing ads for you to make you happy and provide a seamless experience.
A power user spends around 1–3 hrs/day on youtube watching videos. That means if they are not subscribed to premium among the 70% of the video they watch they are getting ads.
Facts about Youtube chefs:-
Food is one of the top youtube-video categories as mentioned by HubSpot.
Fun Fact:- ‘First We Feast’ — Millie Bobby Brown Needs a Milkshake was one of YouTube’s most trending of 2022.
Clearly, there is good engagement in the food category on YouTube videos. So, it makes sense if we think about some solutions around problems users are facing which can take this engagement to the next level.
Problem Statement:-
Our user sam uses YouTube to find dishes that he wants to prepare and then follows them step-by-step. He uses his phone to watch these YouTube videos, on the chrome web browser. Sam prefers to watch the video while cooking, pausing at times when the dish needs some time to cook. When he returns, 1 of 2 things happen:
(a) either he has to reload the video sometimes and an ad starts playing, or
(b) an ad just starts playing because it was a long pause.
But this is a bad experience for Sam because he is in the middle of cooking and, being new at it, is nervous that he might be making some mistakes while cooking the dish.
Selected Solution:-
Let them disable/skip ads right now but then they’ll have to see more ads in the future.
Objective:- Build a skip-ad solution around cooking video viewers.
Description:-
- When a non-premium user starts watching a YouTube video, it should start with two ads.
- The 1st ad is skippable after 5 seconds (actual length has to minimum of 12 seconds) of watch time and the 2nd video will be a non-skippable 20 seconds video. (varies from region to region).
- Now moving forward in the video, the next ad should appear at 30% of completion, which will be a non-skippable ad of 20 seconds.
- Post this, the next ad is at the next 20% completion of the video. This will be a non-skippable video.
- Again the next ad should come at next 20% completion of the video and so on. Each of these will be a 20 second non-skipable video.
- Here users have to either buy a sachet version of Youtube premium which should be ₹10/day or skip the ad.
- Selecting the youtube premium should open bottom drawer of the app and user can complete the payment by Play credits or preferred mode of payment.
- If users opt for this solution and payment get succesful, they get to experience all benefits of Youtube premium for the next 24 hours.
- If they don’t opt for this option, then they can click on ‘Skip ad now and watch later’, the ad will be skipped and it’ll be an ad in their watch ad queue (manage in the backend).
- Every time users click on ‘Skip ad now and watch later’, one 20-second non-skippable and one 5-second skippable video will add to their watch ad queue.
- Once the user finishes watching the ‘Video_1’ and clicks ‘Video_2’,should should inform user that they have skipped the ad on ‘Video_1’ X times, so they have to watch the ads here.
- Order of queue will be 20-second non-skippable ad -> 5-second skippable video (actual length can be anything) -> repeat.
Conditions ➖
- Before watching video 2, if users opt for youtube premium, then do not show them any ad and their watch ad queue will be empty.
- This solution is applicable for videos of at least 5 minutes in length.
- If user closes the app before watching ad of Video_2 then, watch ad queue will remain as it is. User will have to watch all ads at the start of next video.
- If user closes the session after watching more than or equal to 15 seconds of non-skipable video, then at the launch of next video, a 20 second non-skipable video will be skipped and it should start with a 5 second skipable ad.
- If user closes the session while playing the 5-second skipable ad at any duration, then a whole 5-second skipable ad will be removed from user’s ad list.
- If user upgrade themselves to premium at any stage, then their ad queue should be empty.
Reason to Select this solution:-
- As the user is doing a time-sensitive task. They don’t want to switch apps to pay for something or fill out a form while their food is cooking.
- Both of these tasks will take some time and attention, as at least 50% of the video is completed and they are in the middle of something important.
- This solution is the quickest one which can offer them a frictionless experience. The user also knows that as they are
References:-
https://timqueen.com/youtube-number-of-channels/
