How to cite this article / Standard reference

Díaz-Lucena, A., Álvarez Monzoncillo, J. y Mora de la Torre, V. (2022). YouTube and the new direction of the Spanish press . Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 80, 47-67 https://www.doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2022-1549

Translation by Paula González (Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Venezuela)

Introduction

The informative video, as DíazArias and R (2009) has defined, is one of the key pieces in the global audio- visual language since it “goes beyond linguistic borders. The videos that make up the television news- casts combine the visual discourse with the verbal one, the latter having a decisive role as an anchor for the images”. In this way, it could be said that news presented on video facilitates the consumption of information. However, in the online environment, the video format also plays other roles for the media: it has become a sign of identity and distinction, paving the way on social networks and genera- ting revenue from advertising.

It has been shown that the use of the two languages (visual and linguistic) applied to information in video format on the Internet achieves a higher ratio of views and audience participation and, conse- quently, attracts greater investment from advertisers on these platforms (Hallgren & Nylund, 2018). Thus, although the cost of producing the video is higher, the revenue obtained through views is also higher (Hallgren & Nylund, 2018).

For more than fifteen years now, informative online videos have shared space with the news in the digital editions of newspapers. Their inclusion took root strongly from 2007 (Guallar, 2008) and, since then, their presence has been growing year after year, becoming a common format on the Internet to tell the news (Reevell, 2007; Micó and Masip, 2008; Mayoral and Edo, 2014; Lawrence, 2020) (Lawrence, 2020; Mayoral & Edo, 2014; Reevell, 2007). To this successful context of news video, we must add the relocation of self-produced audiovisual pieces that the media carried out in their digital editions, hosting them directly on social networks, which, together with the creation of original content specialized for social networks, has set the guidelines to establish a strategy, which began to be visible from 2014, and which would be called platform publishing or distributed content. The results derived from its application have been beneficial for many media out- lets, which have been achieving more views of their content through social networks than on their own portals (Kalogeropoulos & Nielsen, 2017). In this way, we agree withSantín and Álvarez-Monzoncillo (2020) in that we are beginning to find ourselves in a scenario where the media generate news “beyond their website […] looking for new commercial margins in the convergent and global market”. The increase in video production and the creation of communities around topics of interest has been truly spectacu- lar in recent years (Raun & Petersen, 2021).

Video has gained prominence on social networks, as Mark Zuckerberg predicted in 2014 (Miners, 2014), and repeated in 2015 at the annual developer conference (Jarvey, 2015). This is a format that has benefited news traffic on all social networks, among which Facebook and YouTube are the most prominent (Shearer & Mitchell, 2020). Its success lies mainly in the simplicity of its consumption, without neglecting the great possibilities of expression and creation that it offers (García-Avilés, 2015). These, in fact, translate into a constant increase in the demand for the visual format on social networks, which is confirmed in the increase in views as reflected in the 2021 IAB Report “Study of Social Ne- tworks”, on the analysis of these types of communication tools in Spain. Newspaper companies want to become content distribution platforms but this entails expenses that are difficult to amortize because their business models are not sufficiently consolidated. Perhaps such uncertainty stems from the fact that the new models are trying to be defined from the original patterns designed for other less dynamic environments and with passive audiences. If the job were left in the hands of global platforms, they would be exposing themselves to the risks of having their algorithms imposed. The consumption pat- terns of media audiences are changing, which requires a strategic transformation of companies in their relationship with their customers (Kueng, 2017; Westlund, Krumsvik, & Lewis, 2021).

Literature review

The digital reconversion in the media industries began a long time ago, when they began to be able to distribute their content through the internet and, thus, modify their value chain. This was the case of the press. But, there also was an integration between text and video that created greater dynamism and attractiveness for newspaper websites. The all-important development we need to understand lies in the coming together of the involved sectors: “These technologies and corporations have become firmly entrenched among media users and producers, making each of them co-dependent on their products and platforms to design, distribute, access, and share media content” (Deuze and Prenger, 2019, p. 14). Thus, this reality can be seen more than ever in the channels that newspapers have opened on YouTube, in which they not only distribute their videos but also aspire to be co-creation platforms in which the reader is expected to contribute comments and recommendations, and also content production. This is the new wave of integration and convergence in the media ecosystem.

The current situation of the media has been described as collapse, hybridization, and precariousness (Curtin and Sanson, 2016), in the same way, innovation and entrepreneurship (Krumsvik, Milan, Bhroin, & Storsul, 2018), as well as intermediation (Lobato, 2016), virtual reality, and platformization (Duffy, Poell, & Nieborg, 2019), es- tablish the characteristics of a profession marked by the algorithms of the platforms that control the process (Bishop, 2020; Gillespie, 2014) or big data (Arsenault, 2017), etc. And let us not forget that all this is taking place in an uncertain phase of globalization (Curran & Hesmondhalgh, 2019). The transformation in the media system has been spectacular (Holt and Perren, 2019).

The rise of the platforms has been remarkable so the alliance between newspapers and YouTube has become an important catalyst in the fight to consolidate a sector in constant renewal. These new con- tainers for information and online viewing are characterized by their storage possibilities and the so- phistication of their algorithms to relate the archived information. In this way, the platforms contribute to the fact that the hosted audiovisual content, its managers, and users stop operating independently to form a true social network.

Objectives and hypothesis

The central goal of this work lies in the analysis of the use that the Spanish press makes of YouTube. Other specific ones emanate from this main objective: 1) analyze the work that the national and inter- national press has done in this social network; 2) find out if the Spanish media outlets, aware of the work of their international counterparts, are taking advantage of the potential of the platform; 3) find out the ballpark figure of their earnings on YouTube; 4) understand the weight that the creation and distribution of audiovisual content have on their business models, and 5) assess whether the commit- ment to increasing broadcasts of audiovisual content in the short and medium-term could be viable to develop their businesses.

From the specific objectives, some research questions are derived that will guide us towards the wor- king hypotheses: is the Spanish press increasing the publication of audiovisual content on this plat- form? And if so, are they investing more effort than their international counterparts? Also, why do they choose YouTube to host their audiovisual content over other platforms or their own websites? What benefits does it offer or what differentiating elements are observed? Do all media outlets use YouTube Player for Publishers? What is the average income per views obtained that could indicate the viability of this new business model? What will be the scenario in the short and medium-term if investment in audiovisual content continues to increase?

Therefore, we start from these questions to expose the four working hypotheses that will lead this research:

H.1. The Spanish press has increased the number of news videos in the last year on You- Tube compared to other international media. Through the quantification of the audiovisual content published on YouTube for twelve months in the selected national and international media outlets, it will be analyzed whether the trend regarding the total number of publica- tions in their accounts is ascending or descending on this platform. Confirming or refuting this hypothesis will give us information on the audiovisual consumption of pieces broad- cast by the national press compared to the foreign press.

H.2. If so, and if the increase in audiovisual publications by national newspapers on this platform is confirmed, a second hypothesis derived from the first is established, leading to the demonstration that the main causes of this movement lie in: a) the facilities offered by the Player for Publishers from YouTube to the media; b) the clarity and simplicity of the algorithm proposed by YouTube to monetize published content. If these reasons are rati- fied, the optimization of the most important resources that this platform offers will become clear.

H.3. This research will try to find out or approach an approximate of the income that media outlets receive for the views of their audiovisual content published on YouTube to verify or reject in this third hypothesis, that: a) these benefits are not enough to refound the business model of the Spanish press; b) the production of audiovisual content in newspapers grows annually and impacts the dimensions of the content creation departments that increase in size. This effect is configured in the rotating internal organizations of a television nature.

H.4. And, finally, it is estimated that the strategy of these newspapers on YouTube in the short and medium-term will be similar: to continue increasing their audiovisual produc- tions to continue monetizing, but also to sell their brand on social networks and, therefore, hook new followers and retain those they already have.

Methodology

This research is approached from a mixed approach that combines quantitative and qualitative pro- cedures. This mixed approach combines numerical measurements and statistical analysis of the data through sequential and evidentiary processes, which are common in the quantitative approach, such as those applied in research with the same object of study (Mayoral-Sánchez et al., 2016; Newman et al. ál., 2021; Díaz-Lucena et al., 2022) and that are complemented with inductive methods typical of the qualitative approach, such as semi-structured interviews with the media and professionals.

In the first phase of the investigation, a quantitative data analysis methodology has been used that has been structured as follows:

1) Previous observation of the selected media accounts on YouTube.

2) Extraction of the data necessary for this analysis. Most of this information has been obtained di- rectly from the newspapers’ YouTube accounts: a) account opening date; b) the number of published videos; c) the number of views, and d) the number of followers. However, due to the number of news- papers selected and the ambitious time frame of this study, which includes twelve months, —as will be explained below— the software of the statistical marketing company Keyhole has been used to obtain two new data: e) monthly number of published videos and f) the monthly number of views. Keyhole’s software routinely dispenses reports in Excel format with a maximum history of twelve months.

3) Statistical analysis with the compiled figures to find: a) growth or decrease in the number of broad- casts and visits obtained by the account in the established period compared to the total; b) comparison of the results between national and international press media.

In the second phase of the study, various interviews were conducted with those responsible for the analyzed media but also with specialists and YouTubers to qualify the results obtained, but also find out the economic benefit that the visualizations on this platform bring to these newspapers. Data that has not been easy to approach mainly due to two reasons: the confidentiality of the media prevents them from revealing their economic benefits or the details of the contract signed with YouTube. Thus, direct- ly with the press, it has not been possible to obtain any data. And the second issue lies in the scarcity of research or current national or international studies where this issue is addressed in the press sector. However, although those responsible for the media have set the limits of the information provided, some YouTubers and journalists specialized in this platform —who have asked us not to quote them— have provided us with useful information that little by little we have been able to contrast with each other to shape and get closer to some realistic figures that will be exposed in this work.

The interviews with those responsible for the chosen media have been configured mainly with three basic questions: 1) Does your newspaper use YouTube Player for Publishers? If they use another pla- yer, what advantages does it bring them? 2) How many people does your audiovisual content creation department consist of?; and 3) the third question asks about the possible movements or changes that these rotaries could carry out in the short or medium term, considering the success that the creation of audiovisual content is reporting. Of the six Spanish media analyzed, five of them have agreed to answer these questions. Their names and positions are as follows:

1. Carlos de Vega (deputy director of El País) and

2. Pau Rodríguez (CMO of La Vanguardia)

3. Vicente Ruíz (deputy director of El Mundo) and Guacimara Castrillo (responsible for social networ- ks of El Mundo)

4. Mario Díaz (deputy director of El Español)

5. Daniel Ventura (director of El HuffPost)

The selection of national newspapers has been carried out based on three variables:

A. General newspapers.

B. With the largest number of followers on YouTube

C. With a great deal of activity and movement on the YouTube platform: the total number of posts since the account was opened has been assessed but also its current activity during the study period (minimum of one daily publication).

Therefore, to enrich this study with greater diversity, within the general newspapers it has been deci- ded to choose three traditional newspapers with print circulation and digital version and another three digital-native ones. In this way, fulfilling these requirements, the newspapers selected for this study are: El País, La Vanguardia, and El Mundo, together with El Español, elDiario.es, and El HuffPost.

On the other hand, in the selection of international newspapers, the activity present on YouTube has not been taken into account as many of them started before and their strategy has varied since then. Thus, the number of followers and the number of visits they reach despite publishing less content have been more relevant in their choice. These journals have met the following conditions:

A. Western general newspapers

B. A large number of followers on YouTube

C. A large number of total posts

D. A large number of monthly visits

The twelve international newspapers chosen represent six Western countries and are: Le Monde, Le Parisien, Figaro Live, Bild, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Corriere della Sera, La Repubbli- ca, The Guardian, The Guardian News, The Times and Sunday Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times.

And, finally, the time frame of this study comprises twelve months (July 2020 to June 2021). The rea- son that has led to choosing a broad period lies in the need to observe the possible evolution and varia- tion in the work carried out by these media outlets on YouTube. In this way, the possibility of obtaining more data to carry out a more precise and in-depth analysis is opened. Likewise, the socio-health situa- tion derived from Covid-19 must be taken into account. One of its consequences has been the increase in user connections to the Internet and especially the choice of streaming video platforms such as Ne- tflix and YouTube (Nokia, 2020). Although this fact should be underlined, since it directly affects our object of study, it must also be taken into account that YouTube’s growth progression year after year has been upward, as revealed in the 2021 Digital News Report (Newman et al., 2021). It is considered significant to note this circumstance that affects our research, but the specific impact of Covid-19 on the growth of the selected newspapers on YouTube will not be studied.

Analysis results

This analysis begins with a brief explanation of the situation of the international press on YouTube fo- llowed by the quantitative results for the national newspapers since we will know from the beginning which is the real photo on this social network of the Spanish press when comparing it with the work made by their international counterparts.

International newspapers

Taking into account the main Western media outlets (Table 1), an early opening of their channels on YouTube is observed in the first instance, specifically between 2005 and 2007. A range of dates, which, as we have stated at the beginning, would be the ordinary one for a newspaper that is not a new creation and taking into account that this platform began to roll in 2005.

Table 1: Data from international newspapers. This information has mostly been extracted from the official accounts of these media on the YouTube platform, available in the account information tab, except for the number of videos and monthly visits provided by the Keyhole marketing company sof- tware and which have been added to find the total of twelve months.

YouTube	Followers	Date	Total views	Total videos	365 days videos	365 days views
Le Monde	1.080.000	17-mar.-06	262.422.861	1.973	101	26.183.585
Le Parisien	594.000	6-oct.-14	532.589.219	7.030	2.135	222.716.774
Figaro Live	353.000	21-may.-06	215.509.809	10.213	626	20.281.990
Bild	765.000	7-nov.-14	1.120.285.007	19.253	5.178	334.142.724
FAZ	177.000	27-oct.-05	182.944.358	22.521	4.892	44.600.855
Corriere della Sera	180.000	1-sep.-07	154.455.898	10.744	5.884	79.148.681
La Repub- blica	618.000	24-may.-16	604.029.085	26.445	2.631	67.348.208
The Guar- dian	1.700.000	15-feb.-06	545.561.445	6.943	182	11.015.531
The Guar- dian News	1.910.000	22-oct.-14	1.560.702.354	10.479	2.412	283.784.348
The Times	55.800	29-jun.-07	41.622.547	553	83	2.412.498
The Washin- gton Post	1.750.000	30-jun.-06	902.663.831	17.605	1.711	177.526.998
The New York Times	3.610.000	13-oct.-06	1.182.120.302	9.912	113	41.425.923

Other data is very striking in Table 1, such as: a) five newspapers have exceeded one million followers (Le Monde, The Guardian and The Guardian News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times) and three reached one billion views (The Guardian News, The New York Times, and Bild). It should be noted that among the first newspapers to create a specialized video department (in 2007) are The Washington Post and The New York Times ( ; García-Avilés, 2015) (Layton, 2008); b) the French news- paper Le Figaro called its YouTube channel Figaro Live. If we pay attention to its nomenclature, but also its contents, this project transcends the concept of a traditional news newspaper to be closer to a television channel. This same phenomenon is also perceived in The Guardian News in 2014 and The Washington Post Live in 2017 (although with less success than the British or French); c) The launch of The Guardian News in 2014 by The Guardian follows the same line as Le Figaro Live, as it focuses on live broadcasts and breaking news and provides a very specific video format that does not reach 90 seconds duration in most of its audiovisual content not broadcast live. This is a channel that, despite its short history, if we compare it with the rest, has more followers and triple the number of visits than its main channel; d) The German newspaper Bild is one of the latest to break into YouTube, but like The Guardian News, it has achieved a large number of followers and views in a short time. It is remar- kable the number of views reached in twelve months, 334 million, followed at some distance by The Guardian News, with 284 million. Its investments in new technologies are constant and proof of this is demonstrated by the launch in August 2021 of its own cable, satellite, and online television channel. Since 2019, Axel Springer’s newspaper has invested more than one hundred million euros in this new challenge and its audiovisual content creation team now has seventy people (Scally, 2021).

Chart 2 shows the percentage represented by the number of video broadcasts and annual visits in the study period of each of the media outlets cited in Table 1 compared to the total number of videos hosted and visits obtained on their YouTube channel.

Chart 1.

Keyhole marketing company, as explained at the bottom of Table 1.

Corriere della Sera is the most prominent media outlet, with 54.77% of videos broadcast and 51.24% of visits obtained in the study period. This means that it has doubled its broadcasts on this channel in a single year, with averages of 490 videos per month and 6.5 million visits obtained monthly. It is followed by Le Parisien, Bild, FAZ, and The Guardian News above 20% and with average broadcasts between 431 and 178 videos per month. In decrease, we can see The Times, Le Monde, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Its percentage of the total is actually low, with video uploads on YouTube of one every several days. The work of The New York Times stands out, a newspaper that began to create audiovisual content regularly as of 2007, which has a base of more than 3.5 million followers who show great activity on YouTube, —a fact that warns of the intense work that has been done in previous years—, and they allow it to obtain more views of its content with fewer videos. This paradigm, also observed, although differently in The Washington Post or Le Parisien, is not the general trend. The average is found in percentage figures for the creation of videos that are very even or for lower views compared to broadcasts.

National newspapers

The creation of YouTube accounts by the Spanish press happened somewhat later than for their inter- national counterparts, in general (Table 2). Although some of the selected media outlets were launched in video format in the second decade of the 21st century, as is the case of elDiario.es, El Español, or El HuffPost, and therefore their appearance on YouTube began later, this was not the case of El País, La Vanguardia, or El Mundo.

Table 2: Data from international newspapers. This information has mostly been extracted from the official accounts of these media outlets on the YouTube platform, available in the account information tab, except for the number of videos and monthly visits provided by the Keyhole marketing company software and which have been added to find the total of twelve months.

YouTube	Followers	Date	Total views	Total videos	365 days videos	365 days views
El País	1.540.000	11-jan. -08	913.592.733	23.385	2.790	49.637.457
El Mundo	493.000	20-may.-13	329.046.721	12.253	6.399	116.296.914
La Vanguar- dia	923.000	9-jan. -07	556.627.819	20.905	5.710	66.454.752
El Español	26.900	6-jan. -15	11.541.912	4.234	2.052	3.539.561
elDiario.es	131.000	30-may.-12	72.801.980	7.081	1.289	9.430.085
El HuffPost	113.000	9-may.-12	53.180.779	2.192	453	3.511.127

Similarly, in the case of national newspapers, more differences are detected in the use they make of YouTube compared to the international press. In the first instance, despite the youth of some of the aforementioned newspapers, their investment and presence on YouTube compared to other social ne- tworks such as Twitter are really low (Díaz-Lucena et al., 2022). A fact that, as we will see below in chart 2, seems to be changing. Other elements that can be extracted from a reading of table 2 are the following: 1) the great difference in followers and visits obtained by the newspaper El País in compa- rison with the rest of the newspapers confirms the conscious dedication of this media outlet (Bernal et al, 2019); and 2) the number of views that El Mundo has obtained in the months of this study is truly striking, as are the broadcast averages of its audiovisual content, as we will see below.

Chart 2. Analysis of the data presented in Table 1 that presents the growth percentage of international newspapers in twelve months on YouTube. The raw data has been extracted from the official account of the media outlets on YouTube

and the marketing company Keyhole, as explained at the bottom of Table 2.

Chart 3 details the percentage of videos and visits to each media outlet in the study period. As we can see, the newspaper El Mundo leads with 52.22% of new audiovisual material and 35.34% of visits re- garding the total, which, translated into monthly averages, implies 533 videos and 9.6 million views. A higher ratio than that of Corriere della Sera, although both reflect with their figures a parallel strategy to achieve greater presence and increase their penetration and monetization. Similarly, it can be seen that El Español has undertaken a similar tactic, although with much lower averages for audiovisual content and views obtained. El Español hosts a figure of 171 videos and 25,000 monthly visits. The contributions of El País, La Vanguardia, El HuffPost, and ElDiario.es in this period have also been remarkable since the trend, although with great differences between them, is upward. All newspapers publish videos on YouTube daily.

In table 3 we compare the figures of the twelve international newspapers with the seven Spanish ones. It has been divided into three large blocks: monthly videos, monthly views, and views per video.

Table 3: Analysis of the data in Tables 1 and 2 presenting the average monthly posts and visits along with the average number of visits per video. The raw data has been extracted from the official account of the media outlets on YouTube and the marketing company Keyhole, as explained in the footer of Tables 1 and 2.

N	Monthly videos Newspapers	Videos	Monthly views Newspapers	Views	Views per video Newspapers	Views
1	El Mundo	533,3	Bild	27.845.227,0	The New York Times	366.601
2	Corriere della Sera	490,3	The Guardian News	23.648.695,7	Le Monde	259.243
3	La Vanguardia	475,8	Le Parisien	18.559.731,2	The Guardian News	117.655
4	Bild	431,5	The Washington Post	14.793.916,5	Le Parisien	104.317
5	FAZ	407,7	El Mundo	9.691.409,5	The Washington Post	103.756
6	El País	232,5	Corriere della Sera	6.595.723,4	Bild	64.531
7	La Repubblica	219,3	La Repubblica	5.612.350,7	The Guardian	60.525
8	The Guardian News	201,0	La Vanguardia	5.537.896,0	Figaro Live	32.399
9	Le Parisien	177,9	El País	4.136.454,8	The Times	29.066
10	El Español	171,0	FAZ	3.716.737,9	La Repubblica	25.598
11	The Washington Post	142,6	The New York Times	3.452.160,3	El Mundo	18.174
12	elDiario.es	107,6	Le Monde	2.181.965,4	El País	17.791
13	Figaro Live	52,2	Figaro Live	1.690.165,8	Corriere della Sera	13.452
14	El HuffPost	37,8	The Guardian	917.960,9	La Vanguardia	11.638
15	The Guardian	15,2	elDiario.es	802.286,0	FAZ	9.117
16	The New York Times	9,4	El Español	294.963,4	El HuffPost	7.751
17	Le Monde	8,4	El HuffPost	292.593,9	elDiario.es	7.316
18	The Times	6,9	The Times	201.041,5	El Español	1.725

In the first block, regarding the hosting of news videos on YouTube, four Spanish newspapers stand out among the top ten in the last twelve months. Moreover, two of them occupy the first (El Mundo) and the third (La Vanguardia) position. In the segment of monthly visits, for their part, three Spanish newspapers are among the top ten (El Mundo, La Vanguardia, and El País). However, if we look at the number of views obtained for each video published in this period, Spanish newspapers drop to the bo- ttom positions. This ratio of visits per video warns us of some specific circumstances: 1) the previous work that has been invested in this social network, and 2) the activity of the audience that they treasure. It is not so much about the accumulated number of followers but their activity, their fidelity, and habit. For example, The New York Times has more than 3.6 million subscribers to its YouTube channel. El País has more than 1.5 million and Le Parisien has half a million. For each video posted by The New York Times on YouTube, it received an average of 366,000 views. Le Parisien an average of 104,000 and El País 17,000 views. Le Parisien, with only 500,000 subscribers, a seventh of the audience of The New York Times, and a third of El País, obtains great penetration and confirms the importance of the loyalty and habits of the audience it draws.

5.4 ¿What will happen in the short and long term?

After having observed the figures that some of the newspapers are receiving for creating audiovisual content and hosting it on YouTube, —numbers that indicate that they will continue to grow due to the increase in publications but also due to the improvements that the platform will continue to undertake to attract more advertisers— these media have been asked about some issues that could shed a little more light on their future on this platform and, therefore, the evolution of their businesses in the short and long term.

The first question asked of these media was related to the type of player chosen to publish content on YouTube and has been dealt with in the previous section. The second question asked about the number of members of the audiovisual departments of each newspaper. Table 5 shows the employees who or- ganize each section in these newspapers. In Spain, especially since 2015, the investment of the press in audiovisual content has been growing. In this process, they have been acquiring greater responsibilities

and sophisticating their techniques to generate higher quality content. As Miguel Sanz (YouTube res- ponsible for 20 Minutos) argues, the current aspirations are to grow on YouTube by publishing higher quality content that can be seen in the present but whose viewing may also be of interest in the long term and that, therefore, keeps monetizing. Additionally, the investment in quality works as a differen- tiating object of the brand that therefore facilitates the acquisition of new followers or makes the ones they already have even more loyal.

In the analyzed international newspapers, the examples of the American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, began to invest in video as of 2007, coming to form audiovisual crea- tion departments with dozens of workers (Layton, 2008). A case study that has been taken as a starting point in the interviews carried out is that of the German newspaper Bild, which last year had more than one hundred and fifty professionals, including photographers and videographers (Senft, 2021). On Au- gust 22nd, this German media outlet notified its jump to television by free-satellite and online broad- casting. The main reason for this movement lies in its commitment to audiovisual content since, in 2020, eight of its ten most successful pieces were based on canned videos or live broadcasts (Granger, 2021). Concerning this case, we wanted to question the analyzed media about their business model in the short and medium-term, being aware of the annual increase in these publications and the growth of their audiovisual content creation departments. In this way, the third question urges them to reflect on the possible movements or changes that their companies could carry out in the short or medium term, thinking about the success that the creation of these types of pieces is reporting.

Taking these premises into account, the deputy director of El Mundo, Vicente Ruiz, affirms that “this was a thought that became widespread more than ten years ago when we believed that video was the future, however, the reality is different: the audience comes to newspapers to read and the use of video must always be justified”. In this sense, this newspaper is one of those that are growing the most in the publication of audiovisual content and the incorporation of new employees in this section, however, its short and medium-term thoughts are to stay in the same line.

Carlos de Vega, deputy director of El País, comments that we are witnessing an evolution of video and that quality is more important than quantity. In this sense, he adds that he does not believe the Bild case will happen here because the press “looks towards subscription models and video content is also an element to get loyal followers. For this reason, the trend now is to differentiate them, offer high-qua- lity content that cannot be found in other media. In this change, video platforms also arise, which can become the next ally of the press to distribute and produce audiovisual content”.

Pau Rodríguez, CMO of La Vanguardia, confirms that, in the short and medium-term, the situation is going to be very similar. We will continue betting on audiovisual content and, therefore, this will grow as well as the economic benefits from monetization, especially if YouTube continues to implement improvements to attract more advertising and make it easier to host and play videos.

Mario Díaz, deputy director of El Español, states that they will continue to invest in YouTube in the short term because of the facilities it offers them and the quality of their videos, mainly because, for them, YouTube is a little-used channel. Being a relatively young media outlet, compared to much of its competition, they argue that they still have many fronts to cover and many things to improve but they

consider that there are long-term solutions in audiovisual content.

Daniel Ventura, director of El HuffPost, thinks that “their growth on YouTube has to do with everyo- ne’s first mission as editors: to reach as many people as possible. With the muscle we have, we try to create good content and for it to be seen and shared more and more”. Similarly, he confirms that their earnings from views are negligible.

Discussion and conclusions

From the analysis carried out, it can be deduced that the use made by the Spanish press of YouTube represents a notable growth in investment. Furthermore, the newspapers El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia show significant figures in the number of publications and average monthly visits if we compare them with their international counterparts. This confirms the great commitment of the Spani- sh press to YouTube but also the publication of its audiovisual content on other social networks, such as Twitter; This platform has seen an increase in this type of content from 2018 to 2020 (Díaz-Lucena et al., 2022).

Thus, the preference of YouTube over another social network to host their audiovisual content is main- ly due to two factors: 1) the features of the Player for Publishers (playback quality and content loading speed). Although this player is a tool that sets itself apart from its competitors, it is expected to improve even more in the coming years if VPAID technology is incorporated. An update that would attract more advertisers and that would translate into greater profitability for journalistic companies; 2) the relative simplicity and stability of the YouTube algorithm that simplifies the content monetization process, providing it with greater transparency compared to Facebook. This fact has prompted dozens of com- panies to turn to this social network to host their creations (Patel, 2018), as confirmed by interviews. All this has been accelerated by the Covid-19 socio-health crisis, which has caused a series of social changes that have had an impact on the increase in the consumption of information and entertainment in general on social networks, as stated in the 2020 Pew Research report, of which TikTok and You- Tube have been its protagonists.

The third of the hypotheses has been answered by calculating the turnover obtained from YouTube,

—ascertained through quantitative and qualitative techniques— and which confirms that 10% of the total income of many of the analyzed newspapers has not yet been reached, but the truth is that they begin to approach it. Although these data do not represent a considerable item in the income structure for the strengthening of the current journalistic model, it does ensure a commitment to its transfor- mation. In this sense, the creation, specialization, and sophistication of units dedicated specifically to the production of audiovisual content (or the hiring of third parties for this task), has increased in this period as a result of the upward trend in profits. Apart from this, the impact of the reduction in the price of technology today should be highlighted, as it paves the way for access to the different recording, production, and broadcasting processes. For all these reasons, it becomes clear that the audiovisual content creation units of the press will continue to grow in Spain and their structure and organization will be more similar to television models, as is being observed in the international model if we look at some of its YouTube channels (Figaro Live or Washington Post Live) or the aforementioned case of the Bild newspaper, which last year launched a television news channel via satellite, cable, and online.

And, finally, the Spanish press does not contemplate in its future strategy that the movement carried out by the German newspaper Bild is a possible solution to the systemic crisis to which this sector is subjected. It follows from the analysis that their short and medium-term strategy will continue to be the creation of audiovisual content based on these requirements: optimization of monetization, the loyalty of the bases, the engagement of new subscribers, and branding.

In short, and while awaiting new contributions that illuminate the subject from other approaches, it can be stated that audiovisual content will gain prominence in newspapers in such a way that it will be key to the future business model, especially if three new scenarios are explored: increased investment in ar- tificial intelligence, massive acquisition of advertisers on YouTube, and presence on video-on-demand platforms. All this implies improving management tools, changing the corporate culture of companies, and a strong push in their digital transformation.