Why YouTube Red Failing To Lure Paid Viewers

Launched more than a year ago the Google-owned YouTube Red is still struggling to gain the trust of viewers and subscribe for paid content. At the end of this year’s summer the platform had just 1.5 million paying subscribers and another 1 million signed up on a trial basis and yet to pay the fee. On the other hand Netflix has about 47 million paying subscribers in the United States and across the world about 86 million people have subscribed to it.

The monthly subscription of YouTube Red is $9.99 and offers ad-free videos and streaming music services. The paid version is currently only made available in the US, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. This mean only a fraction of the viewers are offered the fee version. Monthly user base of YouTube is over 1 billion.

The content offered on YouTube Red is same as YouTube, but only comes with ad-free version. This made conversion challenging as viewers are used to watch free videos and the Red platform has no premium and exclusive content to justify the monthly fee.

However, a recent report suggests Google may come up twenty Red Original series and movies by the end of this year to lure paid viewers.

Currently YouTube is under great pressure to compete with rivals Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. The competitors invested heavily last year on content and premium content.

A report reveals by 2020 the global revenue from online TV and video services to reach $51.1 billion. Last year it was $26 billion.