To boil this down:
- Tubes have all the traffic, as people like to jack off for free and they have all the content readily available from content partners either legally or "uploaded by a user"
- The more they like the content partner teaser videos - forcedly optimised for length, content, etc. - the less inclined they are to click through and sign up
- Simple conflict of interest as everyone wants to keep/convert the member
This is quite straightforward.
Can we turn the thinking around? What would you suggest for a tube site as long term solution that keeps content partners happy (= growing and producing great content), yet keeps the surfers loyal to their brand instead of looking for just content partner gains to reverse their decline? Is there a solution where everyone wins?
Most of the ideas above are good for the content partners, but definitely not beneficial for the tube itself and hurts their retention. And you can guess that anything that hurts retention will not be seen as a smart step forward from tube point of view. It's not likely that anyone managing a tube would say "it's ok if I lose some loyal members as long as content partners are more happy than they are right now".
Eg. display short clips without cumshots, present the content better so the CTRs are better, more spaces for promotion, this way the revenue from content partners will be better etc. This is pretty unrealistic, as you won't be able to make up for the lost ad revenue with increase in content partner income. The cam/pills/dating offers are built for the masses and they will easily beat you (you, as tube+content partner cooperation for better results) in the ad creative + bullshit landing page + get out your card call to action optimisation game, considering its tube traffic.
So in short - the tube loses returning visitors, loses money so "the future of content business is not in jeopardy". Unfortunately I cannot imagine a board meeting ending with this conclusion..
Very good thread by the way.