Distribution : Filmhub now distributing your project... to YouTube (??) by Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg

Another reason, in my opinion, never to deal with the marketplace website "Filmhub". But what do I know... I only have 31+ years in the industry and am spearheading the IIGPs "Direct To Audience" initiative...

I got the latest marketing email from Filmhub today announcing how proud they are to now be distributing to... wait for it... YouTube. I read that to myself and said: Wait... would I want to go to a distribution platform so that they can put my content on YouTube, so they can split that big YouTube money with me??? That's what Filmhub is selling now.

Filmhub asserts in their email, among other things, that "Getting your film on YouTube isn’t as simple as uploading your title..."

Which, of course is true, because you have to open a YouTube account first. Which takes, you know, at least a minute of difficult and stressful email confirmations. Spelling your own name correctly and getting your email right can be tough... Of course after that, all you need to do is upload your film to YouTube and.. voila.

Filmhub goes on to say:

"...many filmmakers are seeing stronger monetization on YouTube than they are on other AVOD services like Tubi and Roku..."

Which is both a demonstrably true and demonstrably false, or at least a misleading, statement. WTF is "stronger monetization" supposed to mean? Roku of course leaves it up the channels to generate their own traffic, and every channel pays differently. Tubi pays, to my knowledge, an order of magnitude more more money, based on performance, than YouTube, which last time I checked offers $0.007 (yes, just over half a cent) per monetized view, while collecting from 50 cents to several dollars per monetized view. And YouTube uses a variety of methods to contractually "demonetize" content and keep all the money.

The Filmhub marketing advert states that there was "...a staggering $28B in ad spend on YouTube in 2021..."

Which is a pretty clumsy attempt at implying that YOU can make more money on YouTube by cutting Filmhub in than doing it yourself. How, exactly? (Don't know... Filmhub gives no details on that one).

Finally, it's not even a split with Google/YouTube. This first announcement is that they are now marketing their catalog to Stash... a specific channel on YouTube... Not YouTube itself. So Filmhub's clients will get a split of a split of YouTube payments.

Some people have said they have had good experience with Filmhub. Others have said... why bother? I get my work on Tubi without them and don't pay the split. In either case, as a professional, how do you feel about having Filmhub now marketing your show to YouTube? Because by listing with them, they get to do that without notice to you.

I have a number of issues with what I know about Filmhub's business model. In 2022, they have tried to launch their own streaming service via Vimeo, as far as I can tell using Vimeo's turnkey solution. That service is unsustainable, designed to extract all the money the client (in this case Filmhub) makes... and last I looked the channel had been all but abandoned. Filmhub's foray there implies to me that they don't really run the numbers before jumping aboard these things. But... it would have allowed them to make money on the catalog they are carrying and keep a higher split than the contractual split they broker to an outside platform (just saying, it seems obvious. don't know if that was their plan). Next they announced that they are now a "distributor" not a marketplace... and began trying to charge platforms $500/month to have access to their catalog which they got for free (which they don't advise content providers about, and which they don't split with content providers). I have no idea if that still is their model. Though I kind of doubt Tubi and others would pay them for content that people can submit on their own. Facet TV certainly wouldn't, as I told their sales rep directly.

I would love to hear your experiences, good and not so good, with Filmhub and other services. at the IIPG (https://independentproducersguild.org/), we are collating those experiences so that we can make reasoned recommendations to independent producers about their distribution strategies.