What are the lessons from Channel 4’s YouTube deal?

The news that Channel 4 is going to use YouTube as the mechanism for providing catch-up and archive content, starting in November, is of obvious direct interest to the TV industry.

But Channel 4’s decision to go with YouTube also has wider lessons which apply across other sectors.

First, even Channel 4 – an organisation that does significant marketing activity, has its products (schedules) listed in numerous newspapers, magazines and other outlets each day and has a national TV channel on which it can plug its own products – has decided that going where the audience is, viz YouTube, is the right strategy for it.

It’s fishing where the fish are.

In other words, rather than trying to get people to come to its own system, it is going to the most popular system out there. It’s content is going to the people rather than the people having to come to its content. Sticking your content on a Google service isn’t handy just because Google is the world’s number one search engine. It’s also handy because number two is … YouTube itself.

If going to where the audiences already are is the right decision for Channel 4, think how often that will also be the right decision for other who have nowhere near the marketing reach of Channel 4. Most obviously in the contest of what I’ve written about before, this is a lesson that applies to politicians and to local authorities.

Second, the deal is a form of outsourcing. Rather than having to develop and pay for its own platform, Channel 4 is using YouTube. We don’t know the exact details of the financial arrangements, but even if Channel 4 is paying a generous price it still has the benefit that YouTube is backed by a large, hugely profitable company – and one that has the financial and technical resources to throw at fixing problems.

The risk is that those resources are under Google’s control rather than under Channel 4’s, but this is often the trade-off of using someone else’s platform. You gain from their resources at the cost of having less direct control.

So whether you are in TV or not, the deal is one that can be learnt from.

UPDATE: This lasted five years, and then the following happened.

Popular UK provider of television programmes Channel 4 has removed all full episodes of its shows from its YouTube channel, and will not be adding any more in the future.

Viewers are alerted to the change with a notification message if they try and watch full episodes of Channel 4 shows — as well as those from More 4 and E4 — on YouTube. They will now be redirected to 4oD [its own on-demand service].