Roads & Chapters

If like me you’ve been wondering why Nigerian IrokoTV moved from YouTube to create their own movie website (Powered by Amazon Web Services and Ooyala) well here it is. Google didn’t care.

To make money, he had to put in ads every 15 minutes which greatly interrupted the flow of a full-length movie. He spent months asking YouTube if he could cluster several ads at the beginning the way other channels on YouTube do. They simply didn’t answer or refused to budge, saying those were special arrangements for other partners– even though some of those partners had lower volume.

If his it the first time you’re hearing about IROKOTV, well, they are one of Africa’s most aggressive internet startup. Nigerian tech blog, Techloy, has covered the startup extensively.

Here’s are some telling stats:

• The company has acquired the exclusive rights to distribute all of Nollywood (Nigerian Hollywood) movies online
• Nigeria’s movie industry is the second biggest in the world by volume of films produced
• Before Jason Njoku shut down the IROKOTV YouTube channel, the startup was getting over 1.2 million viewers monthly and has generated about $1 million in revenues mainly from adverts on the movies.
• IROKOTV launched their own website on 1 December 2011 and in that first month registered some 1 million visitors.
• Finally, here’s an article by the founder, Jason Njoku, posted on Techloy, where he discusses his failures and successes on the internet.