YouTube Partnerships' 10 Memorable Moments of 2009

It's been a busy year for the YouTube Partnerships team. We've been working hard to bring you the videos you want to watch, and to date we have signed well over 10,000 partners. These partners include Hollywood studios and TV networks like Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, Turner, Discovery, ESPN and Showtime; new media partners like Demand Media, Next New Networks and Mondo Media; and user partners like Fred, Ryan Higa and Michael Buckley, each of whom is making a living off of the YouTube platform. 

Our number one business goal at YouTube is to help video creators make money from their content online. Last year was the most successful year on record from a partner advertising revenue standpoint. In light of this progress, we wanted to list out some of the more memorable partner-related moments of 2009. In no particular order, here they are:

• Shows and Movies come to YouTube: This launch brought thousands of classic full-length TV episodes and hundreds of full-length movies to YouTube, including Ghostbusters, Taxi Driver, Bram Stoker's Dracula and the Spaghetti Western Trilogy.
  
  
• User-partners experience unprecedented success: Hundreds of YouTube user partners are making thousands of dollars a month on YouTube, but there is a small group whose growth is truly remarkable. Fred, NigaHiga, Smosh and Shane Dawson have each exceeded over a million subscribers, and Fred now has more views than the entire population of the U.S. NigaHiga's short film, "Ninja Melk," released in August of this year generated over a million views in less than a week.
  
  
• Large entertainment players join the platform: Among the major short- and long-form content deals signed in 2009 were Disney, Turner, Warner Bros., Univision, the UK's C4 and Channel 5. In the world of music we continued to offer content from all four major record labels -- UMG, Sony Music, EMI and Warner Music -- and worked to play our part in the historic VEVO launch
  
  
• New generation of media companies emerge: Companies like Demand Media, Machinima and Mondo Media have surpassed the half-billion view mark as they built out rich portfolios of videos, channels and brands. These companies have a loyal following on YouTube and have set themselves apart as the "new media powerhouses" of the future through their forward-thinking acquisition and distribution strategy
  
  
• Viral videos get monetized:  Over the summer we expanded the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos, meaning that users are invited to monetize one-off viral videos and profit from their success on YouTube. One of the stand-out successes of this program so far is  "David After Dentist," a video that's generated over $30k for the uploader
  
  
• Live music rocks the community: This year saw live-streamed events from the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, U2 at the Rose Bowl in L.A., and Alicia Keys' intimate World AIDS Day concert in NYC. U2 especially impressed: broadcast to 140 countries, the concert racked up a total of 10mm streams, making it the most successful live-streaming event in YouTube history
  
  
• Film is released simultaneously in theaters, on TV and on YouTube: Famed French producer and director Luc Besson experimented with an innovative distribution strategy for his environmentally conscious film "Home", which, on YouTube alone, went on to generate 7mm views in 6 weeks.
  
  
• Strong adoption of Content ID: Over 1,000+ partners today are using our copyright management technology, Content ID, including every major U.S. network broadcaster, movie studio and record label. Content ID scans over 100 years of content a day and over 50% of our partners choose to monetize their content on YouTube, effectively turning what was one of their biggest challenges -- illegal use of their content -- into a user-friendly, efficient source of revenue and marketing insight.
  
  
• Uruguayan filmmaker lands multi-million dollar deal based on YouTube clip: Federico Alvarez Mattos' special-effects-laden YouTube video, "Ataque de Panico (Panic Attack!) 2009," caught the eye of Hollywood bigwigs, who offered him a seven-figure deal to bring his talents to the large screen under the tutelage of director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man).
  
  
• Screening Room film wins an Emmy: Josh Raskin's "I Met the Walrus" was one of the first short films featured in the YouTube Screening Room, YouTube's platform for independent film content. Featuring dazzling animation set to an intimate interview with John Lennon, it's been raking in the accolades since its premiere in 2008. The latest award was a Daytime Emmy for New Approaches.
   

It's been an exciting year, to say the least. We can't wait to see what the next one has in store. 

Posted by David Eun, Vice President of Content Partnerships