Notes from L.A. TV Fest

Last week, I had the opportunity to deliver the opening keynote address at LA TV Fest, a two-day conference put on by the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), an organization on which I serve on the Board of Directors. The festival brings together television and web producers, development executives, agents, and brand marketers.

During the keynote, I discussed YouTube's latest developments in the long-form content space and walked the audience through YouTube's premium content Shows and Movies destination. I concluded my remarks with a few tips for content producers, based on my experience:

- Make your content discoverable. There are 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Search is a very popular method of discovery, and using appropriate tags and descriptions, along with products like Promoted Videos, makes it easier for people on YouTube to discover your videos.

- Create safe content. Brand-friendly content is much easier to package and sell to an advertiser or an advertising agency.

- Don't spend too much money on production. What qualifies as "too much"? It will vary by producer, but some of the site's most popular content creators post videos with relatively low production value. Furthermore, a great concept can pique the interest of a backer who can provide greater financial support for your next 10 episodes.

To celebrate excellence in independently produced content for the web, YouTube served as a sponsor of the Second Annual NATPE Next TV Competition, which aims to discover the best new made-for-web pilots across seven genres, and we were proud to support the contest's first-ever "Longform" category. The finalists and winners were chosen by the community -- who could text in their votes -- and a panel of experts. You can see the winners of all genres on the official NATPE YouTube Channel.

Congrats to all who participated.

Posted by Jordan Hoffner, Director of Partnerships