YouTube’s Movie Rental Test Results in Revenue of $10,709

For as long as it’s existed, YouTube has been known as a site to offer free video. But last month, Google tested the waters to see if people would be willing to pay for movie rentals to help recoup the enormous bills that the site accrues every day. To say the test was a roaring success would be a bit of an understatement, with a mere $10,709.16 of revenue generated during the six days five test movies were made available.

Despite earning what seems like a drop in the bucket, Google, which owns the popular video site, states that the test was a success and even exceeded expectations. To be fair, it’s hard to disagree, as only five movies were made available, and all were from indie producers (looking at things this way, this is a -great- way for indie films to gain a bit of exposure and revenue).

The problem, though, is that with the likes of Netflix, iTunes and Amazon, which avid online movie goers are already comfortable with, how is a site like YouTube, which has always been known for free video, going to succeed with such a venture? Pricing and the overall design might help, but as I didn’t see the movies or even what the pages looked like, I am not sure I can comment on those.

In the future, Google is planning to unveil a wide variety of categories with rental movies, with education, health and anime being just a listed few. So, this is clearly not only supposed to target just an older audience, or indie movie goers, but essentially everyone.

Though things seem to have kicked off slow, I’m fairly confident that YouTube can make this work, because even though other services are already well-established for renting, YouTube arguably has the much larger reach (especially if non-USA customers are allowed to rent as well). My question to you guys is… do any of you currently rent movies online? From which service? If none, why not?

Of course, YouTube would like to add more popular fare to its rental service, and it remains in talks with major studios about securing rights to that content. When it will come to YouTube’s rentals is anyone’s guess. “A lot of movie studios that are partners of ours have content that they feel is more appropriate for a transactional model than an advertising model,” Mr. Dale said. “We are focused on making our rental offering more robust in the next few weeks and months.”