Victor Potrel knows what it takes to win on YouTube.
He worked there himself for more than four years managing content partnerships before jumping to Lego, where he was manager of the YouTube Labs production unit.
In 2019, Potrel jumped to TheSoul Publishing as VP of content distribution for the platform-based digital publisher, which started on YouTube before expanding to Pinterest, Snapchat, Roku, Samsung and other platforms that support video posts.
But now TheSoul is branching out into new forms of creator monetization. In December, it bought a majority stake in Underscore Talent, a talent management agency that represents social media, streaming and podcast creators.
Video creators have entered a period of “rapid experimentation,” Potrel said. Some are pursuing commerce, some are getting into CTV and others are going all-in on short-form vertical video, where views counts are like monopoly money but the payouts are more like cents than dollars.
Potrel spoke with AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: How does TheSoul make money?
VICTOR POTREL: The majority of our revenue comes through revenue-sharing programs from the platforms, which do the ad sales themselves. That allows us to focus on growing our brands and our viewership.
But we’ve also done a number of brand deals where we produce and distribute content for advertisers, for instance, or we help advertisers make content that will resonate with our audience and their audience.
We have revenue in subscriptions, events, affiliate, on-site ads and ecommerce.
And another growing business for us is to provide distribution and content production tools to third-party creators, which is something we’re looking to develop more.
What rev-share programs are out there aside from YouTube?
YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat are the main ones, but TV platforms, like Roku, and most of the OTT platforms, actually, have enabled a form of rev-share.
We also work with platforms where it’s about driving traffic to a site, so we find other ways to monetize. But, yes, there is a growing portfolio of platforms that recognize it’s important to also support content creation and provide a share of their revenue.
How developed are those programs?
Facebook’s program has been around. You need to reach certain thresholds on viewership, quality of content and followers, and then Facebook starts running advertising on your videos, streams and different formats.
Snapchat has something similar within the Discover section, which is a part of the app where you can find content from different publishers and creators.
YouTube paved the way 15 years ago with that model. It’s a great way to encourage content creation, because people make their own investments in the platform based on compensation.
To what degree have you shifted to short-form vertical videos, as opposed to the old YouTube standard of longer and landscape?
We started with short-form content in 2019 on Snap, followed by TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
Short-form is going through an exciting and experimental phase. Some things work on one platform and not another – it’s impossible to predict what will go viral. But we’re reaching new audiences through the format, not necessarily the channel, which is interesting.
How do you think about short-form metrics? The view totals are so high – Gangnam Style-level numbers – but does that translate to monetization?
It’s very different. It reminds me of the debate a few years ago when Facebook started pushing three-second views and people were comparing it to YouTube.
But on a platform like Facebook there can be different metrics because people stumble upon videos in their feed and that can happen multiple times, whereas on YouTube you have to look for and click on specific videos. Although now we have Shorts, where it’s a feed and you might only watch a couple of seconds.
Do you use any internally created metrics?
On all platforms we look at engagement numbers for followers and subscribers. How many of the viewers that we reach actually convert into followers or subscribers who are more likely to watch the next piece of content?
We also look closely at watch time, which is a more universal matric than viewership, to get a sense of how we’re doing overall, not just in a session or one video.
But we also want to understand what [short-form video view totals] actually mean, because it’s not the same as watching a 15-minute video or livestream. We’ve found that once we’re able to build an audience for a short format, we can transfer some of those viewers to longer form. On YouTube, we have a lot of crossovers between audiences who can find us on Shorts and then convert to longform or a livestream.
Are you optimistic about social commerce?
We work with brands in China where commerce is a huge part of creator monetization, but that’s yet to happen anywhere else at scale.
There are brands that focus on gadgets and product reviews that people can buy through an affiliate program, but the platforms are still early in enabling a seamless online shopping experience.
But there are opportunities around livestreaming, Amazon in particular. On Amazon Prime Day, for instance, we found that livestreams were an effective tactic to gain traffic and make sales, and not just on Amazon. We see viewership and conversions go up around the web during those big shopping event moments.
What are the obstacles to social commerce adoption outside of China?
Short-form videos are a great way to highlight a product, but you never know what’s going to go viral.
We had a YouTube Shorts post about making your own soap that got more than 500 million views. I’m sure it generated sales. But we need an easy way for people to purchase a product when something does go viral. Creators will then be able to expand monetization and produce more commerce-related content that helps brands sell.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
