Guardian to push YouTube presence

The Guardian is seeking to boost its advertising revenues by offering brands the chance to exclusively sponsor its content on YouTube.

Guardian

The newspaper brand is also hoping to beef up its presence on the platform by making its content easier to find.

The Guardian has more than 11,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel, but it is hoping to increase this number while also simplifying the internal process of managing and optimising its output on the site.

It is hoped the Guardian’s increased efforts on YouTube will boost advertising revenues by using premium brand sponsorships and leveraging all of the site’s other ad formats. YouTube partners hosting popular videos can receive a split of the advertising revenues their content brings to the site.

In its last annual report, Guardian News & Media posted an operating loss of £38.3m, much of which was attributed to a £22.8m drop in recruitment advertising revenues.

The media group said it was overhauling its operations to adopt a “digital first” strategy in June last year, in response to the changes affecting the entire media sector, which has seen a huge rise in digital audiences but declines in print circulation and associated revenues.

The Guardian has partnered with technology company Rightster to lead its YouTube push. Rightster distributes, monetises and promotes YouTube video content, as well as reporting back analytics to its clients.

The announcement on The Guardian’s YouTube strategy coincides with the news that its biggest brand campaign for 26 years, “Three Little Pigs”, has now been viewed on the online video site more than 1 million times.

Stephen Folwell, director of business development and brand extensions at Guardian News & Media, says: “Since launching our digital-first strategy last year, we have been striving to make our content available on more platforms than ever before, and this partnership [with Rightster] will enable us to build on the Guardian’s existing YouTube presence, and bring our multimedia journalism to new, engaged audiences.”

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