The Ministry of Culture will spend almost UAH 800 thousand to audit the channel, which has already cost UAH 100 million
5 November 2024 13:12
The state enterprise Multimedia Platform for Foreign Broadcasting of Ukraine (MPFU), which is subordinated to the Ministry of Culture, has signed an agreement with Sabsab LLC to conduct an audit and develop a development strategy for the English-language state YouTube channel The Gaze. The contract is worth UAH 782 thousand including VAT. This was reported by NGL.media, according to "Komersant Ukrainian"
According to the terms of the contract, by the end of 2024, the contractor must perform
- a comprehensive audit of the channel (UAH 564.5 thousand);
- development and approval of an updated development strategy (UAH 141.1 thousand);
- mentoring and support for the strategy implementation (UAH 76.4 thousand).
It is noteworthy that only one company took part in the open bidding – Kyiv-based Subsab LLC, which is the developer of the SubBox service for analyzing YouTube channels. However, according to a representative of one of the Ukrainian TV channels, an annual subscription to SubBox costs about 70 thousand hryvnias, while the average market price for a comprehensive audit of a YouTube channel with recommendations is 1000-1500 dollars (41-62 thousand hryvnias). That is, the price of the audit and recommendations in this case is overstated by about 10 times.
Sabsab LLC is owned by Oleksandra Amelina, a resident of Dnipro, who acquired the company in April 2024 from the previous owner, Nadiya Vynnyk, a resident of Vinnytsia.
Follow us on Telegram: the main news in brief
What is The Gaze?
The Gaze was created in May 2023 as a Ukrainian foreign language channel to compete with the BBC itself. But in a year and a half, their YouTube channel has gained only 35.5 thousand subscribers and 8.1 million views. At the same time, the total cost of The Gaze platform from the budget of the Ministry of Culture has already exceeded UAH 100 million.
Experts note the low efficiency of the YouTube channel. According to media manager Yevhen Safonov, the channel’s statistics raise suspicions of fake views – despite the large number of views, videos have very few comments and reactions. For example, an episode of Hidden Angle with 605 thousand views has only 41 likes and 9 comments. For comparison, a video by The Kyiv Independent, a non-governmental Ukrainian English-language media outlet, with 242 thousand views, received over 3,400 likes and 1,200 comments.
Safonov also noted that the diversity of content on the channel (from reports from the frontline to cooking shows) prevents YouTube algorithms from correctly identifying the target audience and recommending videos to potential viewers.
Follow us on Telegram: the main news in a nutshell
