Sorry I waited to post it:
"Pay service to offer early look at online video" by Michael Liedtke, Associated Press March 24, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO — Would you pay to see some of the Internet’s most compelling video clips first? Vessel, a new service trying to change the way that short video pieces make money on the Internet and mobile devices, is betting on it.
Instead of free-for-all distribution supported solely by advertising, Vessel will charge $3 per month for exclusive early access to clips of musicians, sporting events, comedians, and many other forms of entertainment not available on YouTube or any other digital video service for at least three days. Chief executive Jason Kilar, formerly head of Hulu Plus, believes Vessel’s model will be able to pay video producers about $50 per 1,000 views of their clips on the site. That compares with just $2.20 per 1,000 views of ad-supported video at sites such as YouTube, Kilar says.
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YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., says Kilar’s estimates are wrong but declined to reveal its average payout per 1,000 views. Payments to YouTube partners have increased by at least 50 percent in each of the past three years, the company says. Research firm eMarketer Inc. estimated that YouTube’s total ad revenue last totaled $7.6 billion and about $4.6 billion was paid out to YouTube’s partners....
Before Vessel, Kilar spent five years running online television streaming service Hulu, which was launched in 2007 by a group of TV networks trying to counter YouTube’s popularity. By the time Kilar stepped down in 2013, Hulu’s premium Plus service had attracted about 6 million subscribers, though it never mounted much of a challenge to YouTube, where about 300 hours of video is posted per minute.
Since Kilar and another former Hulu executive Rich Tom started Vessel last year, the San Francisco startup has raised $77 million from two venture capital firms, Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital, and Amazon.com Inc. chief executive Jeff Bezos.
Sure is plenty of money out there in this age of ma$$ive wealth inequality and state budget holes.
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UPDATE:
"I’m a sucker for movie trailers and “Three Stooges” shorts, myself, but is anybody a big enough sucker to pay for this stuff?"
(Blog editor $heepi$hly raises hand yet again)
