For many online video publishers, if the budget exists to pay for a commercial publishing solution, then this is the obvious way to go. For others, particularly low-budget or start-up publishers, the benefits of a commercial service may not immediately justify the costs, especially if projected growth is likely to be slow or the publisher is not fully committed just yet.

Although all the major commercial providers of online video platforms have modest budget entry-level packages, some publishers may want to test the waters using the free services and content of the world’s 3rd most popular web destination – YouTube! Indeed, many top-tier publishers with top-level commercial solutions in place also maintain a YouTube presence in parallel specifically due its phenomenal popularity.

So how does it work? Given the global number 3 statistic, most of us are likely to be users of the YouTube service, be familiar with at least its basic workings and have some awareness of the various features that have been introduced (and withdrawn, in some cases) since it took the world wide web by storm in 2005.

Users, however, may not be familiar with the service from a publisher’s perspective. Here are the top-level pro’s and cons of using the service as a lay publisher (ie a non-YouTube partner).

On the positive side

• It’s free!
• Videos are by default counted in the powerful YouTube search facility.
• Content can be viewed across all major platforms using either Flash or HTML5.
• Flash players can easily be customised, HTML5 customisation is ‘probably coming soon’ at the time of writing.
• YouTube APIs can be exploited to present media listings/produce cool content discovery mechanisms.
• Content can be sourced from any YouTube publisher who marks their content publicly accessible (most do).
• In-player advertising only appears on video provided by approved YouTube content partners.
• YouTube channel pages can be customised radically using standard web styling tools.
• YouTube has built in analytics that cover the basics.

On the negative side

• The YouTube brand marker persists in the bottom right corner of every video and clicking on it will result in the user being taken to that video on YouTube.com, possibly providing an unwelcome exit point from your site.
• Targeting advertising against YouTube content can be inflexible and or expensive, it also requires that you become an accepted content partner.
• Syndication is hard to manage while maintaining publisher brand value at anything other than a pure content level.
• Because it’s a free service, there’s no service level agreement or support infrastructure and YouTube has every right to change implementation details at any time (in practice, they are unlikely to do so without fair warning as this would disrupt and alienate many users).

On balance

• If you are less concerned about advertising/syndication and perhaps want to leverage content provided by others, YouTube can be a good choice of publishing service which will free up budget for other uses.

Digital Surface provides You Tube player and channel customisation services, we can also connect players to reporting systems (such as Google Analytics) where player interaction and media playback data can be analysed in the wider context. If you’re unsure of where to begin, we provide cost effective system design and technical consultancy services. Contact us to find out more.

Tags: custom video player, customised youtube video player, Flash, HTML5, iPad, online video platform, technical consultancy, youtube