When YouTube Live Is Not Enough, Should You Move to an OTT Platform?

Where YouTube Live Stops and an OTT Platform Starts

Money Issues

You earn only 55% of ad revenue on long-form video and 45% on Shorts, and if you turn monetization on for a live stream, YouTube can run pre-roll and mid-roll ads, including automatic mid-rolls. These can be a huge turn-off for some viewers, and though many people are aware that YouTube is responsible for the ads and not you, they may still associate whatever they see with your offerings.

Money that your viewers pay you directly gets split too, and you cannot turn on monetization right away. Worse, YouTube keeps raising the bar for accessing this money.

Operational Control

YouTube has its own operating limits that can interrupt a broadcast, too, and you don't have a lot of recourse if they say you've violated them. A Community Guidelines strike, or a stream that matches another copyrighted live broadcast, can turn your live access off for a time or for good, and streaming from another channel while that restriction is active is treated as circumvention.

Is It Right for You?

All the rules are often workable for people who are just posting public talks, a weekly service, or a product announcement. But they can cause all kinds of problems when you need to set a ticket price, keep the archive inside a subscriber area, place a sponsor spot on your own schedule, or put your name on a television app.

Getting Back Control

When you have a service you operate, it changes everything and puts you back in the drivers seat. You can publish a branded app on connected television stores and on mobile stores, choose a monthly fee or a per-event price, and run your own pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll inventory or connect an ad network. Lightcast has offered that stack since 2010. In our Media Cloud, you can do it all at once:

• Manage video and audio, channels, live events, and 24/7 schedules
• Distribute to custom apps on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, iOS, and Android
• Send the same live feed to your own apps and to social destinations, including YouTube
• Use the cloud scheduler to place on-demand files in a linear grid and fill ad breaks with commercials, sponsor spots, or filler
• Monitor all your stats and data
• Easily set up advertising-supported viewing, monthly subscriptions, and pay-per-view, and we take no share of that revenue

When your next event needs a price you set, a sponsor spot you place, or a television app in your name; or when you're just tired of someone else having all the operational control, contact us at Lightcast.com to see our live and monetization tools and request a demo.