The War for Talent: YouTube Offers Exclusive Deals to Counter Netflix
YouTube is in talks to pay popular creators millions of dollars in exchange for exclusivity, aiming to curb Netflix's efforts to attract top stars to its platform. According to Bloomberg, the company is considering direct funding for shows and profit-sharing from branding deals, but only for creators who commit to uploading content exclusively to their platform.
YouTube is offering popular content creators payments of millions of dollars in exchange for a commitment to upload their videos to the platform exclusively, as part of a direct struggle against Netflix for the biggest stars on the web. According to Bloomberg, YouTube is considering directly funding creators' content, as well as giving them a share of large branding deals, provided they upload the videos to the platform before any other service.
On the other side of the equation, creators who sign agreements with Netflix are expected to pay a price. According to the report, YouTube will reduce the likelihood of such creators appearing in marketing campaigns or company events, and will prevent them from participating in some joint branding deals if they upload content to Netflix simultaneously. Netflix, which has more than 325 million subscribers, is in talks with dozens of prominent YouTube creators who are already uploading content to both platforms simultaneously.
From the creators' perspective, the collaboration with Netflix allows for additional income on content they are already producing, alongside exposure to a new audience. However, some of them avoid this due to Netflix's requirement to submit videos days in advance, as well as requests to remove certain commercial sponsorships from the content.
YouTube and Netflix were considered for two decades to be friendly competitors that operated in separate worlds — one in user content, the other in original content in a Hollywood style. But in recent years, the lines between the two are blurring:
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YouTube currently leads in television viewing and has acquired rights to events like the Oscars ceremony and NFL games.
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Netflix has acquired rights to popular children's programs like Cocomelon and is promoting YouTube creators to attract young viewers.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan previously argued that creators who also work with competitors eventually bring viewers back to the platform, but in recent weeks he and his staff have reached the conclusion that the phenomenon of parallel uploading to Netflix has become a real problem, making it difficult to sell advertising for YouTube. This is not the first time the company has taken such a move — in the past, it paid creators who refrained from collaborating with the competing venture Vessel, and also developed a short video format in response to TikTok.
