YouTube Red Is Alive! (Hoping To Turn Green To Black)

At long last, and as of today, YouTube's long-awaited YouTube Red $9.99/month ad-free subscription service is alive! (although as of now, 10:30 am Eastern it still isn't - here is the link to get your free 30 day trial).  Build-up is over.  Reality now sets in.  Will it succeed?  Will sufficient numbers convert from free to pay to make it interesting?  Will YouTube Red break into the black and be "profitable" (in whatever way Google/YouTube defines profitability)?  And -- even more elementary -- what will YouTube Red be when it grows up?  These are the questions asked within digital circles as we speak (and as we watch).  Industry observers (doesn't that include all of us?) are awaiting early returns/data with bated breath.

As in all things Google and YouTube, skeptics abound.  That is the natural order of things.  And, last week I wrote a post titled "In Defense of YouTube (& the YouTube Red Experiment)" that laid out my response to those skeptics.  The week before, I wrote a post titled "YouTube Red - What Do Creators REALLY Think?" that laid out the blunt no-holds-barred thoughts of video creators themselves -- how they feel about the great YouTube Red experiment (and how it was rolled out to them).  That post included thoughts from my interviews/Q&A with 5 CEOs/execs from major MCNs and OTTs.  It is worth reading to fully internalize their perspectives -- since YouTube is an essential platform for most of them.

YouTube's grand new "experiment."  Let's watch.  Let's see the data.

And let's all in the video game keep dialing it in.  After all, the more the merrier, right?