During the press conference, Peter Chernin and Jeff Zucker mentioned signing five advertisers in four hours before the venture was announced. A little color on that from an executive close to the deal: NBCU’s digital media sales head Peter Naylor was asked to pitch some advertisers on being part of the announcement. Armed with a hastily constructed presentation, “favorable” CPMs and the power of being part of a press release they hadn’t seen, Naylor had commitments for Q3 and Q4 from five charter advertisers in four hours—“multi hundreds of thousands of dollars.” The exec: “He sold in four hours more than 10 percent of the total revenue YouTube made last year. That tells me everything I need to know about the commercial demand.”
—Based on an analyst’s estimate that YouTube 2006 took in about $15 million in revenue for 2006, the Wednesday afternoon sales would be worth more than $1.5 million. Two more advertisers came on Thursday morning.
Of course, a few sales doesn’t equal instant success. One of the tests yet to come will be whether these same advertisers are still around for 1Q08.