Google’s senior executive exodus continues. YouTube’s head of monetization, Shashi Seth, has now left the company to become the chief revenue officer of Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup Cooliris. In his new job at the startup, which has raised some $3 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Seth is going to help develop a new business and advertising model.
“I think part of being a Googler is that you like smaller environments, and I think Google got a little big for me,” says Seth. He was appointed as YouTube’s head of monetization in January 2007. It has been a thankless job.
Despite being the largest video-sharing web site, YouTube is still finding it hard to make money. My sources say that YouTube made around $80 million in 2007, a number that could grow by more than 50 percent this year to around $125 million. A Bear Stearns report estimated YouTube revenues at around $90 million for 2008. I’m not sure if $120 million-$125 million is going to make Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has been publicly talking about YouTube and its money-making potential, happy.
What stands between YouTube and money is the lawsuit by Viacom, as it makes owners of legitimate content a tad nervous. There’s clearly money in partnership content. I was recently talking to some folks that are close to Hulu.com, and they pointed out that thanks to all the legit content, the demand for ads on the site is pretty high; the company, they said, could easily do about $25 million in revenues. Given how little traffic they have in comparison to YouTube, that’s an impressive number. Of course it doesn’t move the needle for its primary backers, NBC and News Corp.
In comparison, the number of visitors to YouTube continues to rise, making it by far the most dominant player in the market. So much so that even Hulu decided to set up a channel on YouTube to attract traffic to their site.
21 trackbacks so far
12:31 PM PT
[...] in 2008 with dominant traffic and leadership, shouldn’t we all be really concerned? Check out this brief article on how the head of monetization at YouTube just stepped [...]
1:38 PM PT
[...] Shashi Seth is heading to Cooliris, not Facebook, where several Google execs have landed recently. YouTube revenues have been in the spotlight lately because of remarks by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. [...]
2:30 PM PT
[...] lost another exec. This time, YouTube’s head of monetization, Shashi Seth, is leaving the company for start-up Cooliris, claiming, "Google got a little big for [...]
4:45 PM PT
[...] departure was reported earlier Tuesday by Om Malik, who said Seth now is chief revenue officer of Cooliris. That Kleiner-Perkins-funded start-up is [...]
4:51 PM PT
[...] departure was reported earlier Tuesday by Om Malik, who said Seth now is chief revenue officer of Cooliris. That Kleiner-Perkins-funded start-up is [...]
6:20 PM PT
[...] With all the activity elsewhere surrounding the monetization of full-length content, and the recent departure of its head of monetization, one wonders whether YouTube should start taking long format, [...]
7:01 PM PT
[...] With all the activity on the web surrounding the monetization of full-length content, and the recent departure of its head of monetization, one wonders whether YouTube should start taking long format, [...]
7:22 PM PT
[...] YouTubeもかなり前からCBS Audience Networkに参加しているが、プレロール広告抜きの短かいクリップしか流していない。このため、ネットワーク内の他の場所にはある全編コンテンツはない。明日からYahooでそれが始まるだろう。全編コンテンツの収益化にまつわるウェブ全体の動きや、収益化事業のトップが最近辞任したことを考えると、YouTubeが全編の商用コンテンツの取扱いに真剣に取り組み始めるのかどうか気になるところだ。それとも、Yahooのようなライバルと比べて多少輝きを失い始めるのだろうか。 CrunchBase Information CBS Audience Network Yahoo! Information provided by CrunchBase [...]
8:31 PM PT
[...] to GigaOm sources, YouTube only made a measly $80 million in 2007. That’s just gross revenues and one can only [...]
8:56 PM PT
[...] fact that they actually have a head of monetization is ridiculous . That title is such bad [...]
9:58 PM PT
[...] Google has been struggling to make money from the incredibly popular video site. He told GigaOM, which first broke the news of Seth’s departure, that the search giant has become “a little big” for [...]
12:00 AM PT
[...] Read the rest of this post Print all_things_di220:http://voices.allthingsd.com/20080604/om-6/ Sphere Comment Tagged: Shashi Seth, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Om Malim, Cooliris, YouTube, Voices, Google | permalink [...]
3:17 AM PT
[...] GigaOm: YouTube’s Head of Monetization Quits, Joins Cooliris [...]
5:33 AM PT
[...] Om reports: [...]
5:34 AM PT
[...] With all the activity on the web surrounding the monetization of full-length content, and the recent departure of its head of monetization, one wonders whether YouTube should start taking long format, [...]
11:11 AM PT
[...] Om Malik notes YouTube exec Sashi Seth is now Cooliris chief revenue officer. [...]
11:49 AM PT
[...] this week YouTube’s Head of Monetization quit the company to work at a smaller company that presumable might be easier to monetize. Since Google purchased [...]
9:33 AM PT
[...] they sent our way, and made my getting better easier. Thanks to their professional library they have been making a lot of money and could do about $25 million in revenues. Glad to see others include YouTube haters are finally [...]
7:36 PM PT
[...] won’t need to worry about the fact that YouTube isn’t making much money and that their head of monitization quit. There are a bunch of often mentioned reasons for why YouTube has struggled to monetize [...]
3:48 PM PT
[...] will fill the void left by Shashi Seth, who left the company in June to join startup [...]
8:45 PM PT
[...] (formerly known as PicLens) recently hired Shashi Seth, formerly chief of monetization at YouTube, as its chief revenue officer. Last week, he shared some interesting facts about the company. Among [...]
10 comments so far
11:47 AM PT
I have worked with Shashi and think that he is a rock star! The Product Managers who worked for him are all very sad that he left, and I personally know that many other folks who worked with him are very sad to see him go.
12:15 PM PT
Is this “$80 million in 2007″ pure profit, or the total income? And i also guess they will make more money in 2008, after all Google,who happens to own YouTube, determines how much a site should get from Adsense,right?
1:01 PM PT
I heard he had a falling out with that skateboarding Bulldog. He is the real rockstar, and could not work with this guy.
1:34 PM PT
@ Jimmy
That’s the revenue for the year, not profit.
3:42 PM PT
I don’t get it. Youtube could be making billions of dollars right now. It should be bigger then AdSense for text the day they switch on the overlay advertising option for all Youtube producers, not only the very large (more than 1 million views a month) producers having text based ads on the right side of the html page.
I also don’t understand why Youtube doesn’t use voice-recognition technology to generate transcripts automatically as well as translate that to provide searchable subtitles in all languages.
They’ve been talking about $15 per thousand views for overlay advertising (Revver style) popping up at the bottom 1/5th of the video. This should work for embedded videos as well.
Youtube should let all content providers even small independent ones make those up to $15 per 1000 views for choosing to activate the overlay ads. This would improve the quality of the content put on Youtube enormously. This would instantly convince all TV show producers as well to put their full length episodes on Youtube instead of Hulu or any alternatives.
I think they have a responsibillity to start the true online TV and media revolution. Once independent freelance artists and reporters can start to make a living publishing on Youtube, this will immediately change the whole TV industry, this will also influence elections for the better.
3:49 PM PT
Doing a quick calculation, based on the current 4 billion views per month, Google and the Youtube content providers could be making 2 billion dollars per year just on Youtube activity if they activated that overlay advertising option now. (only Youtube content providers who activate it would display it on their videos).
And since the quality of the content would skyrocket the day putting quality videos on Youtube makes money, the view count could also increase even further to tens of billions of views per month.
4:39 PM PT
Any info on adoption rate of youtube and hulu ?
I guess youtube is more popular in emerging countries compared to hulu which is more popular in the usa
And Hulu has a great future coz I just love the quality of videos on Hulu .. Would they go the subscription way ?
8:33 PM PT
Apparently Shashi is living this line from careerists: it is better to *have worked for* a big company than to work for a big company.
12:29 PM PT
word is that he was booted cause he did not deliver. most of the views on YouTube are of User-gen-content, which is of unknown rating and ownership. so can’t naively mix pre-rolls, overlays or banners with those.
@charbax-for the above reason, you will find that youtube only puts overlays or banners on what they call promoted videos i.e licensed content. but those videos are boring and seldom viewed.
11:45 AM PT
Hi!
It might be that Seth is want a little company but earn big bucks. Still, i oppose to Seth Decision. He should have let YouTube pay him more. I think youtube could afford that. If he should have bought a little time to increase the offer, he would have a earned more now.