Om Malik hits the bull’s eye: Yahoo!’s audience is their main asset… in fact, while a lot of people bash Yahoo! for diving into content… the truth is that Yahoo!’s golden days encompassed the period where Yahoo! aggregated, packaged and editorialized content from all over the place, and pleased advertisers.

In other words, while Google built a $200B business by sending people away to websites during the search era, Yahoo! can build a greater business by encapsulating great, premium content, putting it under the Yahoo! umbrella and selling that to advertisers. Of course, those who say this won’t work have never sold an ad deal, don’t know what advertisers, etc.

Anyway… this got me to thinking: THIS is YouTube’s problem.

YouTube really needs to get a clue with regards to their main page packaging. That’s where media companies make 10-25% of their revenue - not the BS long tail that the cluelessati are enamored with.

And noooooooo, I’m not saying this as in “YouTube, feature us more often on your main page” - they do that more than enough… but YouTube’s main page has 1-part ad-friendly content… nestled in between bucketloads of ass.

For example, they just notched Lions’ Gate’s content… big f’n deal. What’s the point of that news if Lions’ Gate will have to live alongside shitty content that advertisers won’t want to touch? Is “keeping it real” worth it if it means alienating advertisers and burning a hole through old man Schmidt’s wallet?

Not sure it is… again, it’s not like you are protecting “artistically worthy content” - you are basically giving real estate to crap in favor of what advertisers (and trust me, users) actually want to see. YouTube’s problem - if it can be called that - is that every video lists two things:
- “related videos (from other producers)” - so usually something from the 96% of crap that it hosts;

or

- “recent videos (from the account holder you are watching the clip)” - again, given the huge pile of shit that lives on YouTube (and yes, awesome - but pirated - stuff too), then the chances of there being something non-kosher linked off the content you are watching is high. Moreover, since more often that not (try 96%) the content you are watching is unholy… then the link off that video is illegal too.

Trust me, don’t underestimate the “one click away from factor”. At my old job, my cohorts and I used to joke that online, you were always seemingly “one click away from a clit”, ie. porn. I hate to say it, but on YouTube, you are always one click away from shit.

Oh, look it rhymes again.

If YouTube wants advertisers to actually spend money on the site, perhaps they need to understand how main pages of ad-supported properties are programmed. Hint: not like YouTube is!

Well… there goes our main page placements, I guess…

Oh no, what will I do without that $20 check now?

In the time it took me to post this, a clueless VC just funded a YouTube clone to allow more crap from infesting the Web and pushing advertisers away.

All right, I feel better.

Editor’s note: PG-13 programming shall resume after this post.

Read Part 2: Why Online Video Businesses Are a Joke.