Google monetizes YouTube
p2pnet news | Advertising:- Hey!, all you YouTube posters out there. You don’t know it, but you’ve just been drafted to help Google earn millions of dollars selling advertising.
Having flashed out $$1.65 billion to buy the site, it believes it’s finally found a way to, “cash in on YouTube’s potential as a magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time,” says the New York Times.
To ‘audience’ add ‘and contributors’.
Ads will show up 15 seconds after someone starts watching a video. But they’ll be overlays at the bottom fifth of the screen, says the story, going on:
“A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it.
“But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.”
Smaller online video companies such as advertising newbie VideoEgg have been using similar overlay ads for nearly a year, says the NYT, adding:
“Troy Young, VideoEgg’s chief marketing officer, said the goal was to get away from forcing users to watch an ad before showing the clip they wanted to see. Those ads are known as ‘preroll’ and are the most common form of online video advertising so far.”
Seems fair. Google does, after all, provide host the videos.
Not only but also, the move, “means the internet search giant is one step closer to introducing its own advertising-supported mobile phone, analysts say, according to the CBC, adding:
“Analysts say the company has been experimenting with a similar model on mobiles, whereby the customer would get a discounted or even free monthly phone service that would be paid for by advertisers. The missing piece of the model, however, has been the challenge of putting those ads on the phone without them getting in the user’s way.”
Also See:
New York Times – Google Aims to Make YouTube Profitable With Ads, August 22, 2007
CBC – YouTube ads could herald arrival of Google phone, August 23, 2007
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August 23rd, 2007 at 10:49 am
Quote:
Shiva Rajaraman, product manager for YouTube, said internal tests show more than 70 percent of people give up when they see a pre-roll. By contrast, less than 10 percent decide to close an overlay, which they can exit by clicking on an “X” in a corner.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070822/D8R626LG0.html
Looks like it’s gonna be a hard sell as most YouTubers are there to dodge the ads at other sites. I think they will wind up losing some of their appeal with this advertising.
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I don’t understand why a video ad format makes people think phone. How much time do people spend looking at their phone? The notion that there is enough time spent watching a phone screen that video ads could fund a free Google phone service is poorly thought out.
Check out the Ad-Supported Music Central blog:
http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/