Is GoogleTube good news for MetaCafe?
by Aner Ravon

In the long run - yes. In the short term - no.

Many people wonder about the future of MetaCafe - YouTube smaller (and in my opinion much better designed) rival. What kind of impact does GoogleTube have on MetaCafe’s future?

Right now the heavyweights will probably wait. GoogleTube will now set the table for copyright practices, advertising models and CPM real value. Yahoo, Microsoft and News Corp. will not go through a “me too” because it’s horrible strategy in this case - YouTube is number one service and a red-hot brand. You can’t beat that by buying number 2

(as a side note - while YouTube’s traffic has spiked since the merger rumors began, MetaCafe’s traffic, as well as the other rivals, has gone slightly down).

More importantly, advertising agencies need time to get up to speed with building advertising practices through such services, and the ecosystem is years away from figuring itself out.

In the longer term, MetaCafe may greatly benefit. First of all, now there is a reference involved, one we all wish for. MetaCafe is much better positioned towards avoiding copyright issues - it uses a much better content filtering system, human and automatic - and it can limit the exposure to commercial copyright infringement. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that a GoogleTube legal mess would actually contribute to MetaCafe under certain circumstances.

MetaCafe has the financial resources and user depth to fuel a couple of more years of rapid growth. Once the industry matures a bit, and if the half assed CPM estimations are even remotely right, MetaCafe will not only have a great brand but a much more significant asset - very profitable operations.

Now imagine what a profitable YouTube would have been sold for.

Aner Ravon
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