True, but from my brief experience of working with Analysts, they do spend quite a lot of time working on their figures, not just plucking things out of thin air. And it's not a two-bit Analyst, it's a couple of guys at Credit Suisse. So I'd presume that they were basing this on something to make it worth reporting such dramatic figures.
A bit more detail here: http://www.contentinople.com/author.asp?section_id=450&doc_id=174797 "Although YouTube makes up approximately 41 percent of all videos viewed in the U.S., the site's ability to monetize its library of videos content remains a challenge. The analysts estimate that YouTube will bring in about $240 million in revenue in 2009, which will come mostly from homepage placement ads and in-video overlays and adjacencies. Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube generates approximately $86.7 million a year on homepage placement ads, or about $7 million per month. In-video ads and banner adjancencies contribute another $87 million, according to the analyst estimates. Sponsored videos ($37.1 million) and sponsored links ($30.1 million) also contribute to YouTube's revenues. On the cost side, Credit Suisse estimates that Google spends $711 million in operating expenses related to YouTube. Those costs include bandwidth, content acquisition, partner revenue shares, site overhead, and storage. The biggest expense for YouTube is the incredible amount of bandwidth that it must pay for. Despite estimating that YouTube pays about half the lowest market rate for bandwidth, the cost of streaming 5 million videos a month adds up. Analysts place bandwidth costs associated with YouTube at about $360 million a year, or $1 million a day. As YouTube ramps up the amount of premium content it serves, content acquisition is also becoming a serious cost for the site, with Credit Suisse estimating that YouTube will pay approximately $260 million in content acquisition costs in 2009. YouTube's revenue share deals contribute an additional $49 million, according to Credit Suisse estimates, while general overhead -- sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A expenses -- are expected to set the company back about $24 million in 2009. Finally, the cost of storage for Google's content library, estimated at about 150 million to 160 million videos for a total of 5 petabytes, is estimated at $12.7 million a year." ... On 8-Apr-09, at 3:51 PM, Steve Rhodes wrote: > > > > Yes, YouTube is losing money, but just because an analyst says they > are losing half a billion dollars doesn't make it so. > > Sent from my iPhone > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
