Google Closed YouTube Deal for $1.78 billion; Rivals Sense Opportunity
Today
Google announced that they have completed the acquisition of YouTube.
Based on today’s closing price of $481.03 per share, the deal is already
worth
$1.775 billion to YouTube’s shareholders.
But the combination of a YouTube copyright crackdown and increased competition could mean that YouTube may find it difficult to stay on top indefinitely, writes via CNN Money. Online video competitors are taking different approaches:
- Metacafe (Oct. traffic 3.8 million users) is trying to differentiate itself from YouTube by offering creators of user-generated content the ability to get paid based on how many page views their videos generate.
- Revver (Oct. traffic 262,000 visitors) inserts one-frame advertisements at the end of videos and shares the ad revenue with the creators.
- VideoEgg is trying to be more of a partner with larger firms as opposed to a destination site for user videos. In addition to tools, VideoEgg has also developed an online video ad platform that's used by social networking sites such as Bebo, Dogster and Tagged.
| Traffic
to Online Video Sites Total Unique Visitors (in millions) |
||
|---|---|---|
| Site | Sept. 06 | Oct. 06 |
| YouTube | 20.8 | 23.5 |
| Yahoo Video | 18.6 | 20.9 |
| Google Video | 13.2 | 14.6 |
| MSN Video | 17.1 | 13.9 |
| MySpace Videos | 8.9 | 10.0 |
| Heavy.com | 6.9 | 7.8 |
| Ebaumsworld.com | 4.3 | 4.2 |
| Metacafe | 4.2 | 3.8 |
| Break.com | 3.5 | 2.8 |
| Source: comScore Media Metrix | ||
