Estimate Puts YouTube’s Gross Revenue At $945m

An important, if not surprising, item: Another Google/YouTube exec has voiced his opinion that YouTube will be profitable this year.  More interestingly, an outside analyst has done the same, and also forecast a gross revenue figure of almost $1 billion.

Let's start by talking about Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, who generated that estimate.  As Peter Kafka explained, Mahaney took MySpace's established revenue-to-page view ratio and applied it to YouTube's stats.  In this manner, he predicted that YouTube will earn $945 million and $614 million this year in gross and net revenue, respectively.

Next year, Mahaney thinks YouTube might earn $1.13 billion and $737 million in gross and net revenue.

As for the other man who believes YouTube will do more than break even, he's Patrick Walker, a director of video partnerships for Google and YouTube.  Walker thinks YouTube's ability to help sell CDs and DVDs will prove important, along with the introduction of long-form videos.  The site's established knack at getting lots of people to watch ads should be handy, too, of course.

Now there's just the matter of whether or not Google will see fit to inform us about YouTube's performance as time goes by, since the company's generally kept exact figures under wrap.

Microsoft and Facebook Adjust Their Partnership

Microsoft and Facebook have "enhanced" their partnership with each other. The two companies will soon be providing Facebook users with what Microsoft refers to as a "more complete search experience". They will be providing full access to Bing features in Facebook. In addition, the Bing and Facebook connection will be extended globally.

Facebook will be taking over full responsibility for selling its own display ads, although Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. "Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy," says Bing General Manager Jon Tinter.

"Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook," he adds. "This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live."

"Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook's API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers," he says.

The product of this enhanced relationship between the two companies will start being felt among users in the coming weeks and months. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo advertising gets involved if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal ever sees the light of day.


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Yahoo Hires New SVP Of Partnerships

Without getting into whether they're right or wrong, it's safe to state that some of Yahoo's critics might say the company needs all the help it can get.  Those same critics might be interested to hear, then, that Yahoo has hired someone whose primary job will be to connect Yahoo with other organizations.

Raymond Stern joins Yahoo as its new senior vice president of North America partnerships and business development.  His professional background is fairly impressive, as he's spent time at big, powerful entities like the Boston Consulting Group (as a partner) and Intuit (as the SVP of strategy and CMO).

Stern's also operated at the other end of the size continuum, serving as the president and CEO of a small company called Presto Services.

And what's more, Stern attended a couple of first-rate schools - both Stanford and Harvard.

So Yahoo's corporate friend-making efforts appear to be in good hands.  And it should be interesting to see if there are any significant breakthroughs in the near future as a result of Stern's arrival.

Anyway, a hat tip goes to Kara Swisher.

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MySpace Reaches Deal With Another Music Label

The "virtual fifth label" is now friends with MySpace.  Merlin, an organization that represents independent music companies, is supposed to have signed a deal with the social network that should nicely complement MySpace's existing partnerships with EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner. Merlin's association with indie artists and late arrival to the music scene (it launched in January of 2007) set it apart from the so-called Big Four.  Just the same, Merlin's a major force, with members in more than 25 countries, and names like Cat Power, Tom Waits, and The White Stripes linked with it. So it's quite noteworthy that, according to Andrew Orlowski, a Merlin spokesman stated, "After more than a year of negotiations, MySpace Music has finally offered Merlin a deal that is acceptable to its members, members who represent 10% of the global music market." What's more, "The same eligibility and level of participation will be offered to all independent labels licensing content to MySpace Music." Of course, the details of the arrangement haven't yet been made public, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  But it looks like MySpace, which acquired Imeem just yesterday and launched MySpace Music Charts the day before, is really on a roll on the music front.

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