It’s no secret that YouTube is extremely popular. When thinking about watching videos online, it is one of the first- if not the first – names to come up. This Google-owned video-streaming platform is actually the second-largest website in the world. It’s next only to its parent company’s flagship product, Google.com.
Why is that? What can you find on YouTube?
Well, you can find all sorts of things. On YouTube, you can watch ordinary people-turned internet celebrities do different things. Some of them react to memes and play video games like Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. PewDiePie. Or you can watch comedy skits produced by Smosh or Collegehumor. If you want to know more about Japan, you can go to Chris Broad’s ABroad in Japan YouTube channel. And if you want to listen to discussions about fantasy books, you can check Daniel Greene.
Those are people who made names on YouTube. But they are not the only people on the platform. You can also find mainstream celebrities and established studios on YouTube. For instance, world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsey posts original content on his YouTube channel. Ani One and other channels now also allow you to watch anime on YouTube legitimately. Every day, new celebrities like the Canadian Prime Minister start their personal YouTube account and get a huge explosion of YouTube views as they leverage their off-site celebrity status to instantly generate another revenue stream for their status.
But what if you want to watch Hollywood movies or episodes of TV shows? Unfortunately, there are only a few free ones on YouTube. That’s before this change happened. Now, there are so many of these things on the platform.
Before that, you have to flock to other platforms to do that. You can check Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Crackle, and such. These websites offer free ad-supported media.
With this latest move on YouTube, you don’t have to go to another streaming service to get AVODs.
The Growing AVOD Industry
Almost everything is now on the internet. That includes the shows you used to enjoy watching on cable TV. And that’s a good thing. As long as you know a good website where you can find those videos, you can watch them wherever you are.
There are different types of Video on Demand (VODs). Those are TVODs, SVODs, and TVODs.
Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) is also known as Pay-Per-View. In this type of service, you buy or rent an individual video. Some examples of platforms that offer this type of service are Apple iTunes and Amazon’s Buy or Rent video store.
Meanwhile, SVOD stands for Subscription Video on Demand. You have to pay a subscription fee to access the platform’s full library of movies, TV shows, and videos. Notable examples of services like these are Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+.
The last type is AVOD. It stands for Advertising-Based Video on Demand. Services that offer AVOD make money by selling ads on their videos. You will find video commercials, sponsored content, display banners, and the likes. It’s like free TV, but the commercials are not as long.
AVOD services have been making traction in recent years. It is mostly associated with traditional TV, but web services are now also available. Pluto TV and The Roku Channel are some examples. Since you don’t have to pay to watch videos on these platforms, they give Netflix a run for its money.
YouTube is already on the TVOD and SVOD market. You can buy movies and shows on the channel Movies & Shows, and there’s YouTube TV, its SVOD service.
YouTube’s model is already perfect for AVOD. It makes money and allows content creators to make money through ads. And it has already made its move to compete with AVOD-offering streaming services.
Free Movies and TV Shows on YouTube
Change has come to YouTube. And unlike the other changes that happened, this one will surely please the users.
You no longer have to go to another website to watch Hollywood movies and TV Shows. Moreover, you don’t have to swipe your credit card.
The video-streaming social media platform has added 4,000 TV show episodes and 1,500 movies. You can watch this for free! Thus, if you spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube, you have to brace yourself. These new additions will make your “Watch Later” list a lot longer.
The platform drew these movies from studios like Warner Bros, Disney, and Paramount. That includes “Legally Blonde,” “Robocop,” “Runaway Bride,” “Gone in Sixty Seconds,” and many others.
Hell’s Kitchen, Andromeda, Heartland, Scream Queens, and The Carol Burnett are among the series added in the new set of offerings.
These movies and TV shows are not exclusive to YouTube. The difference is that they are free on YouTube. Also, many are available in 1080p and 5.1 surround sound audio.
YouTube’s plan is to refresh the catalog with 100 new titles each month. And in a press release, it announced there would add up to 100 new titles each week.
Fox, Paramount, WarnerMedia, and other services and studios have acquired or launched their own AVOD services. That’s to compete with Crackle, Roku, and other services. That probably pushed YouTube to make this action. It puts the Google-owned platform on the map of the growing AVOD marketplace. That’s similar to the response it made to TikTok’s explosion in popularity. It launched a feature or a product that will prevent users from leaving, effectively keeping its title as the king of video content.
Is It an Everybody Wins Situation?
YouTube users will surely like this new addition to YouTube. Who would not want free movies? It is also beneficial to YouTube because it will amp up its ad revenue.
But there’s a small issue here that people may not realize. Suppose everybody spends their time watching TV show episodes or mainstream movies on YouTube. That will cut off the time they can allot to support their favorite content creators. And so, that will affect how much they earn from the platform.
Big personalities with millions of subscribers may not mind that as much. But the impact on those who just qualified for monetization could be huge. That is even worse if YouTubing is their only source of income.