The films were available for 10 days, and YouTube said it collectively got 2,864 views at $3.99 apiece. Nearly half those views were for one film; The Cove received 1,103 views. By contrast, six million Netflix subscribers stream movies online, and millions of iTunes users have bought or rented movies through that service. Of course, Netflix and iTunes each offer a lot more than five movies.
It's understandable that obscure, art house independent films would not make a large impact, but we expected more from films that were plugged on both the official YouTube blog and several other tech, web and film blogs.
YouTube has been talking with major TV studios and other independent filmmakers, pitching a deal that would let them decide how much they want to charge someone to view their films. Once there are some bigger films available, we'll have a better idea of how successful YouTube's rental ambitions will be.