November 11, 2012: Nearly a year after YouTube sprinkled $100 million across the online video ecosystem to create more than a hundred new “channels,” it’s doubling down.
Google’s video giant will provide a second round of funding to 30% to 40% of its original partners and will start notifying those getting more investment in the next few weeks. “Our biggest objective was to kick-start the ecosystem, to bring in great creators, to deepen our relationships with advertisers and to grow viewership,” said Global Head of Content Strategy Jamie Byrne.
In the first round, YouTube took a scattershot approach, funding 100 concepts from a wide variety of producers as well as a lot of mainstream celebrities. A year later, YouTube has a better feel for what worked, namely programming that appeals to a young demographic in genres like humor, music, cars and sports.
http://adage.com/article/digital/youtube-preps-big-round-content-investments/238248/