Saturday, October 07, 2006

Is YouTube profitable?

This has been circulating around recently, so it brings to light just how many people are watching videos online.

Basically, YouTube is selling ads on their homepage, with banners on each video page. They are investigating how to make more money, but it already seem to be breaking even. The gross usage numbers are staggering:

40 million video streams a day
200 terabytes a day of bandwidth (estimates by PaidContent)

Bottom line:

"So, finally, back to the numbers. Is YouTube "wildly profitable"? If we take the adjusted numbers and add in expenses, the answer is certainly "No."

Total Revenue is $4.65 million a month after sales costs and discounts.
Bandwidth/Hosting Costs: $3.9 million a month
Salaries, G&A and other costs: $450,000 a month
Profit = $300,000 a month or a net margin of about 6.4 percent."

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