TVWeek's Trial and Error: Nite Fite Claims Key YouTube Real Estate

From Daisy Whitney’s TV Week blog, via nextnews:

Next New Networks Web series “Nite Fite” took over the home page of YouTube Monday, Oct. 6. The show was featured in the upper-right slot of the home page, a spot usually reserved for advertiser videos, as part of a promotional commitment from the show’s sponsor Starburst.

This is an important “milestone” if you will in YouTube’s history because “Nite Fite” is not an ad, nor is it a branded series. It’s an independent show that has a sponsor integrated into each episode, Next New Networks pointed out on its own blog. The company is betting the YouTube home page placement can drive subscribers and audience for the show going forward.

I wrote some more details about this on our blog. The takeover got the show over 500,000 new views (across multiple episodes), 2,000 new subscribers, and the #1 most viewed slot on YouTube for the day (which means we’ll keep getting elevated views for days). More importantly, the audience reaction was fantastic. We’re working on more results to publish later in the week. Short of it — I think this is a really smart way for advertisers to partner with great web shows that deserve a wider audience, and I’m happy we did it first.