YouTube’s original channels are going global after the Google-owned company announced Sunday night

YouTube will expand its original programing to France, Germany and the United Kingdom. (Rego-d4u.hu/Creative Commons)

According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube has signed deals to pay cash advances to video producers to create more than 60 original channels.   

“From local cuisine, health and wellness and parenting to sports, music, comedy, animation and news, this new lineup of original programming will have something for everyone,” said Robert Kyncl, vice president, global head of content at YouTube. “They are backed by some of the biggest producers, well-known celebrities and emerging media companies from Europe and the U.S.”  

British chef Jamie Oliver will launch his own food channel, while traditional news outlets, such as the BBC and Euronews, will create their own original programming.

Last October the company put up more than $100 million in cash advances to launch approximately 100 U.S.-focused channels. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, these channels are supposed to be “brand safe” for advertisers that are wary of associating their company with low-quality, amateur content. 

“I believe that every interest will, at some point, have a channel serving that interest,” Kyncl told the New York Times. “People are building channels and creating audiences, which is something they couldn’t do before in such numbers.” 

According to the official YouTube blog, the top 25 original channels are averaging over a million views per week and the number of people subscribing has doubled since October. 

But not all advertisers and video producers are jumping on the online bandwagon.  

James L. McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, told the New York Times that video producers “are interested in this, but they’re not about to risk giving up a pilot on NBC in order to do a new YouTube channel.” 

Meanwhile, advertisers “still hold the 30-second spot on a pedestal, and the idea that you would put that creative content into that inferior channel still bothers a lot of them,” McQuivey said.  

According to eMarketer, advertisers in the United States spend $2.9 billion online --chump change compared to $64.5 billion on teleivison.

The European market for online video advertisements is even smaller.

The Interactive Advertising Bureaux (IAB) Europe’s AdEx Benchmark survey, a guide to the state of European online advertising, found that in 2011 the United Kingdom and Germany spent $163 million and $152 million respectively on digital video advertisements.  

“There’s a giant pot of money that is controlled by the broadcast and cable television industries, and it’s because there’s comfort and scale and predictability,” president of PopSugar Studios David Grant told the New York Times. “There’s a fair amount of ways to go - year - before the online video industry has enough scale to move those dollars over. But it is inevitable.” 

Reach Staff Reporter Steven Covelman here.