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What came first: the platforms or the content?

January 19, 2017

Regardless of whether social networks’ creators anticipated their overwhelming success or not, these digital platforms are now a hit in digital marketing. Due to the huge numbers of visitors, social platforms generate important ad revenue figures. In what we may deem the “platform wars”, there is now a confrontation between content authors and social media platforms. The fight is over who should benefit from the above-mentioned revenue. Platforms versus creators – who should win and how could a mutual agreement look like?

Internet celebrities take a stand

The end of 2016 marked the time to speak out for famous video performers who own YouTube accounts. This is due to the fact that Google altered YouTube’s algorithms to the disadvantage of the creators.

Let’s recap. We have a platform that does share ad revenue with content creators – video content, that is. The way YouTube pays the authors depends on various analytics parameters. These should reflect how their content attracts and keeps visitors on the digital platform long enough to serve advertising, too. What “PewDiePie and several of his colleagues” claim is that YouTube is not honest anymore when it comes to sharing the marketing gains with its independent content creators.

The company denies the allegations in a (perhaps) elusive way. Its spokeswoman, Mariana De Felice, mentions there is no decrease in the subscriber numbers. This unfortunately does not cover all than an algorithm may mean in our times. The number of someone’s subscribers might be the same, yet if the revenue depends on their reactions to the content, on how long they remain on a certain page or on whether they are willing to see a couple of commercials or not – then the reply is beside the point.

Platform alterations and their butterfly effect

In what YouTube is concerned, there is one thing visible to the naked eye. The platform gradually implemented changes. Any visitor can sense their results, even if  perhaps he/she cannot pinpoint them one by one. The video content platform seems to evolve into something different. Therefore, it might be plausible creators came to see even bigger effects of these changes at their level.

Let’s not forget that 2016 was also the adblockers’ mighty year. By making advertising blockers available to anyone, developers shook the entire marketing industry. Of course the online marketing is fighting back, one way or another. Lately, most of the top websites have ad-blocker detectors, which politely invite visitors to turn off any such software while on their page.

Since Google is the king of online marketing, it is only natural for the tech giant to have a few aces up its sleeve, when it comes to difficult times. Ad-blockers or not, the continuously improved and smart-ified algorithms are meant to increasingly benefit marketing. Yet with any small alterations come big effects, sometimes planned, other times unexpected. Usually planned changes are previously announced. When they are not, it’s one of the two: either they were not planned as such, either they are bound to disrupt things and a silent rollout was instated.

How about other platforms?

Specialists consider Facebook YouTube’s runner-up due to its video-friendly new features introduced last year. In mid-2016, Facebook spoke of sharing live video-streams -originated revenue with its broadcasters.

Twitter, another potential YouTube competitor, also introduced a creator-oriented program in 2016. Entitled Amplify Publisher, this expanded program involves pre-approved creators in the U.S. running “pre-roll ads with content they have uploaded to Twitter” and sharing in “a portion of the ad revenue generated”. In fact, the company extended a previous program from publishers to the individual creators. The attraction point consists of the authors’ share – 70 percent. This is considerably bigger than YouTube and Facebook’s offers, revolving around 55 percent.

Fortune detailed this Twitter feature in their august 2016 piece on this topic. Here those interested may fill out the participation form. However, we could not find any relevant updates dating from the last couple of months on this particular Twitter feature.

Facebook program updates

Similar to Twitter, Facebook is still considering its idea of sharing video-induced revenue with the creators.

Well, they went past the theoretical considerations point, as well may deduce from their answer to an inquiry on this topic. To quote: “We are no longer accepting requests to be added into the revenue sharing video program. We’ll make sure to make an announcement, if we open the program back up for applications.” The answer dates back to about 5 months ago.

8 months ago another member of the Facebook Help Team stated that this feature is not “currently” part of Facebook ads. The program is in its testing phase. The platform’s specialists are taking their time with it, however. We can assume that going from no sharing to a certain sharing quota is not an easy move to make, however eager the authors might be. As some comments reveal, creators would enjoy fleeing from YouTube due to the discontent this platform produced lately.

By introducing various alterations that affected authors in an unpleasant way, YouTube played a bit too hard its uniqueness card. The creators seem to stick with it (if we are to take their disgruntled comments into account) only because they currently have no other satisfactory choice, revenue-wise.

In conclusion, it will be interesting to see what will happen one YouTube has relevant competitors. Furthermore, if creators expand their accounts on other platform or move them altogether, will their public follow them or will it stick with the network? Is the network more important than its contributors or the other way round?