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YouTube’s foray into movie rental is failure: analyst
MUMBAI: The foray of YouTube into movie rental streaming featuring five independent films from last weekend‘s Sundance Film Festival have resulted in the exercise being termed a failure.
The titles, from the 2009 festival and also this year‘s edition, include The Cove, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker, Children of Invention and Bass Ackwards are available as standard-definition and high-definition downloads for $3.99 each for a 48-hour viewing window.
Only 72-hours after launch, 1,422 viewers had totally paid $5,673.78 to rent the five titles including 303 views of The Cove, 301 of Children of Invention, 298 of Bass Ackwards, 279 of Homewrecker and 241 of One Too Many Mornings, according to MotleyFool.com analyst Rick Munarriz.
The analyst said that the social network behemoth is discovering the challenges Apple, Blockbuster and Amazon have encountered in attempting to deliver movie rental streams and compete with Netflix.
The online DVD rental pioneer, which claims that 50 per cent of its 11 million subscribers watch at least 15 minutes of streaming per month, offers streams of select catalog titles as a value-added feature to new and existing monthly subscribers.
Said Google spokesperson Chris Dale, “it would be a mistake to compare the performance of five independent films on YouTube to Hollywood blockbusters on opening weekend.”
He said that of the 9,000 films submitted to Sundance in 2009, about 53 titles found some form of distribution. He said the initial focus of YouTube movie rental streams is the independent filmmaker who creates “amazing works” on a micro-budget without any assurance their project will be picked up and distributed.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
