Google Tries Content with PopTub

I’ve missed Maria Sansone ever since Yahoo’s pop culture newscast, The 9, ended last April.  Nobody can deliver internet news with quite the same winning sparkle…

Well, according to the Hollywood Reporter The 9 and Maria Sansone are back as the Google-produced and Pepsi-sponsored YouTube curator du jour, PopTub Daily. But the concept created in 2006 ended for a reason. We’ve moved on.

Like The Digg Reel, the show attempts to fulfill an underserved mission – covering YouTube stars, viral videos, undiscovered gems, and celebrities – but as YouTube Reviewed astutely observes, “POPTUB Knows as Much About YouTube as Your Mom.”

Adding editorial to recycled clips from YouTube’s most popular videos is not a good value proposition for viewers.  It only works when said editorial is more entertaining and/or efficient than finding the clips on your own.  While PopTub‘s interviews aren’t bad, I don’t care much for their rundown of what to watch.  I’ve seen it all already.

Apparently, so have other people. Liz of NewTeeVee notes PopTub‘s viewership “so far is [very] modest, with episodes rarely scoring more than 10,000 views and fewer than 4,000 subscribers,” despite Google’s unrivaled promotional muscle. PopTub has committed to 3 billion impressions across YouTube and Google’s contextually relevant content network (which distributes Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy) before the year’s end. Judging by the show’s organic numbers, Google’s going to have to do a LOT of contextually relevant content delivery in order to get to a 10-digit view count.

But Maria is a cutie-pie.  And this is an obvious move for YouTube, which could use a friendly face to curate.  It’s a monstrous site, after all, with millions of new videos uploaded per week.  Lets give them a chance to spruce things up. I know it’s not great now, YTR, but let’s chill and see where it goes.