YouTube became a household name after Google acquired it for $1.65 billion last October. YouTube, a 20-month old company before joining Google’s stable, has since been seeing a phenomenal popularity. So much so that it is today the 4th most visited website on the Internet.
In the 10 months that have passed since the famed acquisition, Google must have been evolving means to cash in on its investment, but none surfaced so far till last week.
An ad format for YouTube has just been formulated in which a translucent strip appears on the video that remains for 10 seconds. Click on it to see the ad and the video stops rolling. After the ad is over, the video commences from where it stopped.
To be sure, YouTube has opened the floodgates of companies promoting themselves through videos (such as the one below from DIET.com). It is not sure if YouTube gets any money from these videos.
In the meantime, as Google finalized the ad model, many more web video sites debuted on the scene that allow you to earn money by displaying their videos on your website.
Notable among them are Voxant’s TheNewsRoom (see the video below on discovery about treating colon cancer), and Veoh Video Network.
However experts who watch the web video space are nearly unanimous that Google’s new technique of ad earning can be yet another money-spinner for it, much on the lines of AdSense.
The downside of course is many videos on YouTube are of poor quality both in terms of picture and content. The other problem may be that unlike AdSense the videos may not show relevant ads, which in turn will not generate click-throughs.
Be that as it may, it’ll be fascinating to watch how the money-enabling videos shape up in the time to come.
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