Originals for YouTube
Do you need to develop a new slate altogether?
While catalogue monetisation is now well understood, using YouTube for original production remains the great mystery for many. Yet the platform is increasingly fertile ground for new scripted and unscripted projects both short form and long form.
Tackling, constantly monitoring and adapting to, and understanding YouTube’s metrics can feel like the antithesis to being creative. In reality it is important to develop a system to handle your analytics, SEO, scheduling, and data interpretation or you could miss out on a goldmine of insights that make your content stick with audiences.
Get this right, and it can inform the creative process on a new original straight-to-YouTube series, scripted or unscripted.
Imagine making a series without broadcaster notes. You put an episode out, and people love or hate a character – you can increase or reduce their time in the next episodes. Viewers commenting asking for more of something? You can do the same with that.
Creatively, you have more freedom as you aren’t fitting into broadcaster or buyer guidelines. The challenge comes from finding the funds away from a traditional commissioner relationship.
The good thing is you don’t need TV-sized budgets; 50k or a lot less can produce a strong proof-of-concept. You need to see your commissioner differently – sourcing investment from other partners that have a vested interest in getting your content off the ground.
YouTube “commissioners” could be private funds, brand partners, sometimes even audiences themselves when you’ve managed to monetise existing content. Brands (especially CMOs) often have dedicated digital budgets – find them on LinkedIn and pitch ideas that fit their tone and audience.
What can I make for YouTube?
Opening up a YouTube strategy might feel like you are building a plane while flying it – and there is both challenge and opportunity in that model. Original content for YouTube does not have to respond to commissioner briefs or strategies.
Original content strategies might include:
- Short-form spin off or originator series that build buzz for long-form projects
- Standalone longform or shortform content in scripted that goes where broadcasters won’t – particularly in genres like racy romance, OTT crime, YA, or feelgood
- Short versions of unscripted fact ent, reality, obs doc or lifestyle series designed to grow communities and prove an audience exists for a bigger pitch
- Experimentation across languages, sometimes with exclusive premieres in territories that have never seen the content before – platforms like @Linguana localise existing catalogues of content in new languages – not just the videos, but the entire page and channel
YouTube originals allow producers to take scheduling into their own hands, pivot based on performance, and test concepts quickly. Done right, it’s a development goldmine, a place to trial ideas, build early audience, and use real viewer data to refine a pitch before taking it to commissioners.
Like @God’s Gang (right) has done – building an audience of millions across YouTube, with touchpoints across other social media plaforms to create a demand to take to potential channel buyers and investors.
For those who embrace its difficulties and opportunities, YouTube isn’t just the word of the year – it’s becoming one of the most important tools in the industry’s arsenal.
Contact Percy & Warren today
Get in touch with us at Percy & Warren to talk about how to meet international partners, explore global co-pros, and use PR to position your company and content on an international level – no matter the language, format or stage.