Maker Studios and Awesomeness TV are two of a very small, but growing, group of YouTube Partners that are securing millions in venture funding for their video production efforts.
According to CrunchBase, Maker Studios has secured $40 million from Time Warner Investments last week, after getting $2.5 million from Greycoft Partners and GRP Partners, according to All Things D, in July of 2011.
In total, Maker Studios, the producers of the Epic Rap Battles In History YouTube video series, has gathered $44 million in total funding.
Here’s “Hitler v. Darth Vader” from Epic Rap Battles In History.
And if you’re thinking that Greycoft Partners is a familiar name, that’s because they invested $3.5 million in the AwesomenessTV YouTube Channel in August. What Awesomeness TV has done with that money is used it to increase its YouTube subscriber base and views. Consider this: when the news of it’s $3.5 million in funding hit, AwesomenessTV had 73,000 subscribers and 15 million total video views (not channel views) versus about 22,000 subscribers and 43 million video views for Zennie62 on YouTube; as of this writing, and well after the funding news, the channel has 219,000 subscribers and over 48 million video views. Money helps grow the viewer base for AwesomenessTV and for Maker Studios.
Here’s an episode of Runaways from AwesomenessTV:
To this blogger these developments are an exciting time for YouTube Partners, regardless of size. The main problem, one that will be adressed in other blog posts, is that some channel owners claim that Google / YouTube doesn’t advertise them enough.
Stay tuned.