"Nobody's Watching" on YouTube

Emily Riley | July 05, 2006, 02:13 PM

As YouTube struggles to find a polite way to shove ads in front of their myriad videos, advertisers could be missing some extremely desirable niche audience targeting. The New York Times wrote about a pilot TV show called "Nobody's Watching" which didn't make it to prime time, but did find its way to YouTube. In a few weeks, viewers had passed the word around that the show was worth watching, and soon it shot to the top of the YouTube list. By now 300,000 people have downloaded it. So of course, the TV execs are rethinking their earlier decision to ax it.
YouTube missed a big opportunity to advertise on the pilot. If nothing else, this group of 300,000 can be called influencers. If they can spread the word so quickly about a show, surely a sponsor would also have benefited from some viral word of mouth.
YouTube's challenge in this is determining which clips are going to make it and are worth the big bucks. They need to put together a group consultants or editors to guide advertisers through the muck and pick out the good stuff. Relying on remnant CPMs is no way to go if you're in the business of producing future national hits.