YouTube's Business Model and Target Audience

The assignment provides a detailed examination of YouTube's business model, including its revenue streams through partnerships with media companies, video creators, and advertisers. The report also delves into YouTube's target audience, analyzing demographics such as age, gender, and geographic location. Additionally, a SWOT analysis is conducted to identify the platform's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Task 3
Research Report for YouTube and their Partnerships.
By Deniza Jashanica.

YouTube first started when a couple of PayPal employees created a video sharing platform where people
could upload, share, and view video content. www.youtube.com was first released on Monday 14th, February
2005 at 9:13pm and was created by Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim. The first video that was
uploaded on YouTube was titled “Me at the Zoo” and uploaded on 23rd April 2005 and shows co-founder
Jawed Karim at the zoo.
During the summer of 2006, YouTube become one of the fastest
growing sites on the world-wide web, presenting more than 65,000
new videos being uploaded. YouTube was ranked as the 5th most
popular platform on Alexa. YouTube averaged around 20 million
visitors per month, with 44% being female and 56% being male
visitors. According to the website Hitwise.com, YouTube attracted up
to 64% of the UK online video market. Then in June 2006 YouTube
joined partnership with NBC in marketing and advertisement.
On October 9th, 2006, it was announced that YouTube would be
purchased by google for $1.65 billion, which was finalised on
November 13th. This agreement between google and YouTube came
after YouTube came up with the 3 agreements with other media
companies to avoid any copyright violation lawsuits.
In 2006, Time magazine featured a YouTube screen with a large
mirror as their annual ‘person of the year’. It quoted YouTubers who
posted on YouTube and featured the site’s originators with several
content creators. Also, the wall street journal and New York times
reviewed the content on YouTube in 2006, with affections on
corporate communication and recruitment.
In October 2012, YouTube offered a live stream of the U.S presidential
debate for the first time and joined ABC news to do this. In March
2013, the number of users visiting YouTube every month reached
1billion and in the same year, YouTube continued to reach out to
mainstream media, launching YouTube Comedy Week and YouTube
Music Awards. One YouTube channel who beaten YouTube own
channel was PewDiePie, this was due to suggesting to new users to
subscribe to the channel by registering an account.
YouTube is an online communication site where people that are registered can upload and watch videos.
The purpose of YouTube is to allow people from around the world to upload and share video clips of
different content. YouTube is the place that provides an opportunity for people to connect, inform and
inspire others around the world. This is basically a distribution platform for original content creators and
advertisers. YouTube earns money through companies, for example, with NBC in 2006, BBC in 2007, MGM,
Lionsgate entertainment and CBC in 2008. Also, partnerships with video creators, as YouTube launched a
partner programme based on ad-sense which allows the uploader of the video to share the revenue
produced by advertising on the site. Lastly, revenue to copyright holders.

The music video ‘Help Me
Help You’, has 9,689,339
views since 18th May 2017
and was trending at #12
on YouTube. The reason
for this is because of the
2,045,482 subscribers he
has on his channel and
because they are fans of
his work then they would
watch this video and as it
is a music video they
would watch it numerous
times. Also, he has another channel, where he vlogs and that channel has 4,662,968 subscribers. From that
channel, he could promote his music video from there and his fans would then check it out. Here is a graph
that shows the amount of
views in 2 weeks. The target
audience for his video is
aimed at 11-29, both male
and females. By pulling out
online data, advertisers know
that he is reaching towards
the demographic: young
people. These videos are
aimed at people who enjoy
comedy.
The demographics are displayed within a graph and pie
chart show the percentage
of the audience’s gender
who watch this video and
channel. The graph shows
the ages of people who
watch this channel, so
therefore, we can infer who
the target audience is for
this specific music video and
channel and lastly, we can
see the percentage of where
these videos are watched
around the worlds. From
these demographic, we can
see the r=target audience of
these videos in depth from
the age, gender and where it
is viewed.

YouTube’s target audience is as comprehensive as it gets. When marketers try identifying their target
audience, the main thing they look at is the demographics. But YouTube has categories for almost every
demographic, so it’s almost impossible to narrow their users down to a single group:
 Make-up and cosmetic categories almost exclusively targets female users.
 Fitness and weight loss category are focused on overweight users.
 Video channels appeal to gamers.
 The list is infinite….
You cannot narrow YouTube’s target market in any expressive way. Any attempt to do so will be unclear and
therefore unlikely to provide any useful data for marketers. The pie chart below shows the ages of people
who watch or use YouTube. Ages
18 to 55 are most popular in using
YouTube. So therefore, the we can
infer that the target audience is
aimed at those ages but can be
target at 17 and under as they are
the younger generation that like to
view videos on YouTube.
SWOT Analysis of YouTube.
 Strengths: Market leader, strong brand, video search tool, part of google, largest database, 800
million unique visitors, available in 42 countries, HD support, analytic and free.
 Weaknesses: Too many ads, no control over content, limited social reach, limited file size, copyright
issues, privacy issues, crowded platform, and limited branding options.
 Opportunities: Music, filmmakers, artists, student zone, additional services with fee (video making,
no ads), increase community engagement and better phone app.
 Threats: New apple video platform, TV substitution from competitors, deep interest target market,
social media, and localized services oversea.