STB, ICTV and Novy Kanal Leave Ukrainian YouTube

StarLightMedia's content will be blocked on YouTube in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian media group StarLightMedia, owned by billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, is leaving the Ukrainian segment of the video hosting service YouTube. StarLightMedia includes such popular channels as STB, Novy Kanal and ICTV. All of them will stop publishing their content there due to low revenue from monetization.

This was reported in an interview with Telekritika by representatives of the group's newly created division — Digital & Pay TV, which is responsible for TV channel signal distribution and internet advertising.

According to Digital & Pay TV creative director Vitaliy Chirkov, YouTube currently brings the group 90% of all internet views, but revenue from monetizing content there accounts for only 45% of internet advertising and nearly 25% of the total revenue of the Digital and PayTV division.

“In order to recoup the money we lose on our website because of uploads to YouTube, we need to 'redirect' 20% of views to our sites, — Chirkov said. — This is an achievable goal. So, by uploading our content to YouTube 48 hours after it airs on TV, we get those 20% of YouTube views on our site within those two days. That is exactly why we are leaving YouTube.”

StarLightMedia believes that “all producers of quality content in the country” should do the same.

“It is we, as a media group, who must control the market for quality video content, while YouTube can remain YouTube,” said Chirkov.

He explained that when talking about leaving YouTube, the media group means leaving the Ukrainian segment.

“Today, all SLM content per year — that's 5 billion views on YouTube, of which 1–1.5 billion are Ukrainian. So when we say we are leaving YouTube, we mean geoblocking for Ukraine. It's pure math,” Chirkov noted.

According to him, in Ukraine the group earns more on its own websites than on YouTube, while abroad it is the opposite.

“The cost per click abroad is indeed different: while in Ukraine we average no more than 80 cents per thousand video views, the average for the CIS region — is 120 cents. In Ukraine we earn more on our own websites than on YouTube. But for views abroad on YouTube, it is exactly the opposite,” the creative director said.

He noted that until the end of last year, Dizel Show was the absolute leader in views among the media group's content on YouTube, and the videos are watched most in CIS countries, primarily in Russia.

StarLightMedia may stop publishing videos on YouTube as early as this autumn, and plans to concentrate all content on its own service, Teleportal. In addition, in January the media group plans to encrypt the satellite signal of its channels and focus on increasing revenue from the pay-TV market.

Earlier it became known that Media Group Ukraine, citing a lack of financial benefit, decided to suspend publication of its newspaper Segodnya and focus on digital and TV formats.

The US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $136 million, over accusations of collecting children's personal data without parental consent on YouTube.