Rivals are gaining on YouTube

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IT has been a decade since YouTube became the first household name in Internet video. In 2008, at the first NewFronts, an annual marketing conference, Google Inc-owned YouTube had the overwhelming majority of the viewership.

Hulu LLC launched and Facebook Inc added videos just the year before. Now, things are different. At this year’s NewFronts, being held April 27 to May 7 in New York, 34 companies are promoting online shows and vying for ad dollars.

While YouTube retains a healthy lead in the US$7.8 billion US market for online video ads, it’s not keeping pace with rivals’ growth. Google’s video service attracted 145 million US personal-computer viewers in February, down slightly from 151 million two years ago, according to researcher ComScore.

During that time, No.2 Facebook’s PC audience grew about 50 per cent, to 91 million. Third-place AOL Inc (67 million) and fourth-place Yahoo! Inc (52 million) have also gained ground. YouTube is still holding its own on mobile, which makes up about half of its global viewership.

“We are laser focused on audiences,” says Allie Kline, AOL’s chief marketing officer. Facebook and Yahoo declined to comment.

“Everybody is sort of gunning for YouTube,” says Paul Verna, an analyst at researcher EMarketer Inc. “A lot of companies are figuring out different ways to get in on that action.”

That includes the groups running many of YouTube’s top video networks. TYT Network, which produces popular news series “The Young Turks,” is increasingly uploading videos to Facebook to grab a bigger chunk of the social network’s 1.5 billion users.

Collective Digital Studio, which works with YouTube celebrities Freddie Wong and Harley Morenstein, sells some of its biggest shows on IAC/InteractiveCorp-owned Vimeo before putting them on YouTube for free.

Over the past two years, many of the production companies that reliably crank out hit videos, some now owned by establishment media companies, have spread their wares to other services.

A year ago Walt Disney Co paid US$950 million for Maker Studios, which runs YouTube’s third-largest network, and it’s now soliciting ad dollars for shows that may not premiere on YouTube.

In September, AT&T Inc and media holding company the Chernin Group bought No.2 YouTube network Fullscreen Inc, which recently produced a video series for Snapchat Inc.

“There are a lot of video platforms rising,” says Chad Gutstein, chief executive officer of Machinima, a video network focused on games and so-called nerd culture. Loyal Creators

YouTube has created a number of initiatives to reward its creators, and ensure their loyalty.

It said on April 8 that it planned to roll out an upscale, ad-free version later this year, and give video creators a piece of subscription fees based on their traffic from paid users. — Bloomberg