YouTube has helped make Psy a household name, but in turn, the K-pop sensation has made Google, the video sharing site’s owner, a big, bad boatload of money.
Speaking on the subject of its fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday, the global search mogul announced that Psy’s 2012 megahit “Gangnam Style” netted $8 million through ad sales alone last year, a stupendous amount of money for a song that everybody listened to for free.
The announcement came via Google senior vice president and chief business officer Nikesh Arora, who, according to Engadget, spent a solid amount of time discussing YouTube’s expanded reach and its newfound abilities in the world of ad sales. According to Arora, 2012 saw YouTube partner revenue double for the fourth consecutive year, and “thousands of channels” are now worth more than $100,000 each year.
Arora added, “YouTube is not only home for creators, but it’s also home for major brand advisers. On YouTube, our top 100 global advertisers spent over 50 percent more in 2012 than they did in 2011. Clearly this is a strong signal of the power in YouTube to reach audiences.”
That signal is strongest in the case of “Gangnam Style,” which shot out the gate this summer and became the first YouTube video to rack up more than 1 billion views in the site’s eight-year existence. It currently sits somewhere above 1.23 billion views.
Exact numbers are unclear, and YouTube prohibits partners from publicly discussing any business relationships with the site, but it’s estimated that Psy will walk away with half of that $8 million.
The other half goes to Google, which means that Google likely pulled around $4 million for a video that required as much bandwidth and server space as this video that finds a guy testing out the water pressure on his new bidet.
Four million dollars? You could buy a couple hundred golden bidets with that cash.
Photo via OfficialPsy/YouTube