Shemaroo makes available full-length movies on YouTube

Shemaroo will monetise its movie content on YouTube.com through advertising. The revenue earned via advertising will be shared between Google and Shemaroo.

Shemaroo Entertainment has created a channel on the Google-owned YouTube.com, where it will upload full-length Bollywood movies owned by them. The channel -- -- will enable internet users to view video/movies content on demand, free of cost.

To begin with, the media company has uploaded around 20 Bollywood movies including latest ones like 'Fool-n-Final' and 'Dil to Bachha Hai Ji', and old hit films such as 'Anand', 'Mili', 'Golmaal' and 'Teesri Kasam' on its YouTube channel. Later, more movies/content will be added on the channel.

Speaking to afaqs! Jai Maroo, director, Shemaroo Entertainment, points out that this is not the first channel launched by Shemaroo on Youtube.com. In fact, it is the 20th channel. Shemaroo already runs about five regional content channels, movie songs channel, short-duration movie clips channel, and a health channel called Shilpa Shetty Yoga channel on YouTube.com.

On the creation of dedicated YouTube.com channels for different content categories, Maroo says, "Users search for variety (content genres) of videos on YouTube. Based on it, we identify content genres which are pretty popular (on YouTube.com), create channels and capture various content niches to cater to demand of consumers, and also expand our content reach via YouTube.com."

He adds, "The idea is not just capture and serve multitude of audiences, but to also provide and convert more number of people to legal video content alternative."

Interestingly, the company has released two movies -- 'Dil to Bachha Hai Ji' and 'Aakrosh' on the YouTube and DVD platforms on the same day. Maroo claims that releasing movies online on YouTube.com will not cannibalise the DVD sales, nor will it affect availability/viewership of the movie on the television channels. "We have observed that the bulk of the audience of YouTube.com, TV and DVD users is not common and the size of overlapped audiences of three platforms is small. Thus, the availability of movies on YouTube.com will not affect/cannibalise movie revenues from DVD sales and selling of movie-rights to a TV channel."

About the business model, Maroo reveals that the movies uploaded by Shemaroo will be monetised by serving ads. He says, "We have advertising revenue sharing arrangement with Google, according to which Google serves ads on the content uploaded by Shemaroo and shares the revenue earned by it."

Maroo declined to reveal the percentage of revenue that will be shared by Google and Shemaroo. According to an industry estimate, content owners -- who have advertising revenue share deal with Google -- get more than 60 per cent of revenue earned by serving ads on video content.

Though the full-length movie channel is new, Shemaroo has started earning from its other channels on YouTube.com. Maroo claims, "We have started making money from our content on YouTube.com. We have witnessed an increase of 2.5 times (year-on-year) in our revenue from YouTube.com."