Business
YouTube Opens the Road to New Online Business Models in Africa With Video Streaming
In terms of content providers, there are three categories that You Tube wants to work with:
1. Existing African broadcasters: YouTube can take broadcasters existing content and extend its audience, whether in the country itself or for the diaspora. Kenya’s NTV has a live stream of its prime time news programme and also uses YouTube as a platform for catch-up viewers. It has had 10 million views to date. South Africa’s SABC also makes use of it in much the same way.
2. African film and music producers: Much has now been written about the success of Nollywood Love but there are still film and music producers in other countries who are not yet properly exploiting the potential of online streaming. A typical example of this kind of content producer would be Homeboyz Entertainment Group in Kenya.
3. New wave user generated content: This is where new African businesses that are beginning to explore business models that will generate real income for them. One example is Kenya’s Kulahappy which produces candid camera-style comedy clips. It has been going for just over six months and has generated 2 million views.
What works in content terms is the same as for TV: where it’s available, users prefer local content: ”80 percent of what’s popular is African content.”
So how do views turn into money? “The secret is quite simple. You have to have an audience for the content. Once you’ve signed up as a Google Ads partner, there are two models: either you earn on a cost per click on adverts served or you get paid a cost per million views.
But how many views do you need before you start seeing real money? This is where Google becomes a little more circumspect. To be fair, the answer is more complicated than a one-liner. You need an audience that is part of a market that is in “high-contention for advertising and has audiences that those advertisers want to reach.”
