Munich. 30 million streams within a year: This is how much access RTL recorded with old episodes of the action series “Cobra 11” on YouTube. Just three years ago, RTL did not have a partnership with Google's video platform. Now YouTube is seen as an additional channel through which reach is created - especially among a young audience that no longer watches linear television.
“On demand” is the keyword. RTL is not alone in this. The competition from Pro Sieben Sat1 and RTL 2 has also been playing content via YouTube for a long time. For the broadcasters, this is not only an additional marketing model, but also a revenue model, explains Andreas Briese, Managing Director for YouTube in Germany, in an interview with Handelsblatt. A broadcast via YouTube enables additional marketing - money that the broadcasters can put to good use in times of declining advertising business on linear TV.
At the same time, the broadcasters are faced with a dilemma: How dependent are they on YouTube's reach - and how much of their own brand and creative content do they give away for free for streaming? At the same time, the broadcasters are also trying to reuse their content via their own, sometimes paid, streaming apps such as Joyn or RTL+.
“Today there is practically no one of relevant size in Germany with whom we do not work,” says YouTube manager Andreas Briese. ARD and ZDF are particularly strong through their joint venture “Funk”, Pro Sieben and RTL are now publishing complete episodes and marketing them themselves.
"Both operate their own creator studios and connect their program brands with YouTube creators. The old and new worlds are growing together," says Briese. Creators are usually professional artists who achieve high levels of reach with live streams and videos produced specifically for platforms such as YouTube or Twitch.
As a technical platform, YouTube does not have any content of its own. That's why the platform needs content - and for the German audience it must also be local. “We know that users search specifically for programs and channel brands,” says Briese. Playing content from TV channels also serves a specific demand.
On the one hand, there is the economic advantage, explains Thorsten Braun, managing director of RTL 2. The channel is owned roughly equally by the RTL Group, Bauer-Verlag and Tele München - which includes the production company Leonine and Walt Disney. “We now generate well over seven-figure annual sales via YouTube,” he says. “At a time when business models are fundamentally changing, this is a valuable contribution.”
YouTube shares half of the advertising revenue it receives with its partners. “It is a common misconception that all the advertising revenue that comes in ends up staying with us,” says YouTube manager Briese. Broadcasters such as RTL and Pro Sieben can now even become active on YouTube via their own marketing units.
However, the problem, according to RTL-2 boss Thorsten Braun, is that when evaluating the data from the content played out, the broadcasters have to rely completely on YouTube's own reporting. “It would be desirable to have independent verifiability and the ability to connect YouTube reporting to the AGF measurement,” says Braun. In the AGF (Video Research Working Group), broadcasters and streaming platforms have come together to measure audience ratings and reach. YouTube is not yet a part of this.
In addition, there is the dependency on the display modalities on YouTube. Around 60 percent of the use of RTL-2 content on the platform would be based on the recommendation algorithm. “If YouTube were to change this mechanism from one day to the next, we would lose a significant portion of our reach,” says Braun. As with almost every content platform, the algorithm is a trade secret.
Youtube manager Briese points out that by playing out the content on YouTube, the broadcasters could also see greater access to their own platforms. The marketing effect is measurable and has been “analyzed countless times”. On YouTube itself, the media companies could address an audience that they would often no longer reach via their own channels: “a young audience, an audience on mobile devices,” says Briese.
RTL-2 manager Braun also admits: “Not using the platform is not an option; YouTube is used too heavily by the general German population.” The broadcaster uploads older programs to the platform, and new content is advertised on YouTube in the form of short teaser clips or trailers.
Pro Sieben has also been uploading older content such as “Judge Barbara Salesch”, “Klinik am Südring” or “K11” to YouTube for a long time. The goal is always to play out your own content primarily on your own channels such as the broadcasters or the in-house streaming platform Joyn, says Nicole Agudo Berbel, who is responsible for distribution and cooperation at Pro Sieben Sat 1. “But there is older content that has already passed through every value chain for us - we can then play some of it on YouTube,” she says.
This could even increase in the future. Broadcasters are increasingly analyzing the supposedly optimal times for broadcasting their content, which is then played out in different lengths and forms on various platforms. With this type of “windowing” – i.e. finding different windows for the broadcast – the broadcasters want to do justice to the increasingly fragmented market.
Not all viewers can be reached simply through a linear broadcast or by uploading a full-length program to one's own streaming platform. Especially not those who consume media content almost exclusively via social networks. It is still important that playing out the content on external platforms “is always a win-win situation,” says Agudo Berbel.
When it comes to the display, we consider it very carefully, “because we have produced the content at great expense and made it big as a brand.”
The broadcasters are likely to weigh this up even more closely in the future in partnerships with other platforms such as Tiktok. There is an even younger target group here than on YouTube. In contrast to collaborations with the Google platform, the monetization models here are even more fragmented - and less tested.
