Nothing on TV? YouTube offers the ultimate turn-on

Simon Tofield knew he had hit the big time last October. The queue for his book signing at the MCM comic fair in London snaked right across the hall.

Tofield, 40, an animator who had spent much of his career in advertising, had always wanted to produce his own illustrated book but persuading publishers was tough. YouTube changed all that.

His cartoon about a cat was accidentally posted on the video site in 2007 and it was an instant hit. Fifteen films and 150 million views later, Simon's Cat has taken over the world like a digital Garfield. The whirlwind of interest on YouTube led to Tofield, who lives in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, north of London, signing a four-book deal with Canongate, the publisher.

"It was a dream come true because I had people approaching me," he said. T-shirts and a cartoon strip in the Daily Mirror have followed.

Tofield is not alone. Apple's mobile-phone app store and eBay have created several millionaires. Now YouTube has its own army of digital moneymakers.

Pre-roll

More than 20,000 content partners are generating revenue on YouTube, according to Salar Kamangar, its chief executive. Some are media giants, such as Warner Bros, but many, like Tofield, began as one-man bands. Income, which is split with YouTube, comes from surrounding clips with advertising, usually "pre-roll", which runs before the video.

"Hundreds of partners are making six-figure sums. The number making $1,000 (Dh3,673) a month or more is up 300 per cent compared with 2010," Kamangar said.

YouTube may be changing people's lives, but it is also in the middle of changing itself. For years the website, bought by Google for $1.8 billion in 2006, looked like a folly. Not only were its revenues minimal, but broadcasters were chasing it through the courts for compensation after their programmes were posted on the site without their consent.

Now, with the lines between television and the internet blurring, YouTube's prospects are rising. Kamangar, who became chief executive last autumn after the departure of co-founder Chad Hurley, has big plans.

There is still room for the grainy home videos of roller-skating dogs — or, this week, images of rioting youths captured on mobile phones — among the three billion clips watched every day. But a shift from amateur to professional films is quietly being encouraged, with more full-length programmes from Channel 4 and the BBC.

In March, YouTube bought Next New Networks, a web production firm. It has little intention of making programmes, preferring instead to train up-and-coming web film makers. The company recently ran a competition called Next Up to find the most promising web film makers in Europe. The top 25, who each won £22,000 (Dh133,396), will come to London next month for seminars to improve their skills.

"It is starting to feel like the same content in terms of quality that you get when you turn on the television," said Kamangar. "And because it is built for the web, they can change the traditional format — they can make it ten minutes long, they can make it more interactive, or use what the audience is saying to help decide what to do next."

Another trend at YouTube is the creation of themed channels, where similar clips are gathered. Among them is the wildly popular Machinima for computer gamers. Kamangar thinks YouTube can fill the gap left by cable TV, which began life serving niche audiences but has gone mainstream.

"Instead of having a general channel that appeals to mothers, you might have a focus on Indian cooking by two ladies teaching others," he said. Themed channels will help to organise the huge number of videos better.

Hours of video

An astonishing 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute — twice the rate of a year ago. Viewers who wanted to see everything posted on the site today would be watching until 2018.

Kamangar wants to step up targeted advertising and create sets of videos that can be networked among friends. "We want to know what you look at and what your friends are looking at so we can make recommendations," he said.

The company has an opportunity to give traditional broadcasters a run for their money. American YouTube viewers spend an average 15 minutes a day on the site, out of total daily television watching of five hours (the total in Britain is four hours). The company wants a far bigger slice of the pie.

"We are the underdog when I think of those five hours," said Hunter Walk, one of YouTube's directors.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, will hammer home his intention to play a key role in the future of the medium when he delivers the keynote speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on August 26.

Increased viewership helped YouTube double revenues last year, but it is tight-lipped on whether it has made a profit. Analysts think it can't be far from going into the black. Research from Citigroup in March suggested that gross turnover — including the income it shares with content firms — will reach $1.3 billion this year and $1.7 billion next. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney found that 81 per cent of YouTube's top 100 clips featured advertising, compared with 60 per cent a year ago.

That statistic marks the progress of Content ID, a pattern-recognition technology that scans posted videos to search for copyrighted material. When it is found, rights owners have the choice of taking it down or placing ads round it. Most go down the moneymaking route.

Complaints have not completely melted away. A $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) class action mounted by organisations including the Premier League and Viacom, owner of MTV, was dismissed this year. But the group, which claims that YouTube breached its intellectual property, plans to appeal.

Tofield is not complaining. Simon's Cat employs three other people and he is trying to train a team of animators so they can make more films. "I'm not a millionaire yet," he said. It is only a matter of time.