On the most viewed clips (clips with, let say, already 1000 views) (doesn’t matter who posted them) YouTube automatically implements a 5 seconds overlay ad that appears over the player and blocks out (darkens) everything else. (It gives a bit of time for the clip to load in the background as well).

This overlay is a 5 seconds spot (can’t be longer than that and it doesn’t link to a company website if you click on it. It’s like a really, really short TV spot. It can be a still picture for outfits with very little budgets…)

Now, people don’t like ads… but they like GAMES and they like to COLLECT stuff.

Each overlay ad is a mini 5 seconds GAME. You have three colored dots on the overlay. The viewer clicks on ONE of them. One is a winner, two are duds. If you’re lucky to pick the winner (you only have one chance) during the 5 secs, you receive a TOKEN that is automatically added to your YouTube account. (It encourages you to stay registered…)

Now, you COLLECT these tokens. If you win a certain number of similar tokens, you can EXCHANGE them against full-length HD Hollywood Films or TV shows on YouTube. The fun part could be that you have different categorires of tokens. (Some would be for specific film genres or just for one TV show and some could be really hard to find, worth maybe ten tokens, etc.) (Tokens are generated randomly by the system.)

Now, you have the problem of guys posting shows and seeing Google make money off their film. Well, they need to be rewarded too. For a succesful posting (ie lots of viewers) they also receive TOKENS… to be exchanged to watch high-quality HD movies or TV shows.

Now, these HD movies or TV shows in the “HD Theatre section of YouTube” can also be sponsored with a longer lead-in spot… That’s even more money for Google.

Now, we have the problem of big brand names not wanting to have their spots stuck on “Jimmy and his weird cat”… Well, they could “control” where their 5 Secs. spots go by teaming with content suppliers through YouTube. Example, a Coca-Cola campaign with Viacom clips… Viacom takes all the succesful shows they own like, for example, “Spongebob”. They cut out little “gems” (two to three minute clips) and they post them on YouTube to watch for free… Viacom via Google sell their 5 second spots to Coca-cola. Everybody is happy. The viewer, who enjoys these mini-clips, can even link to the full episode of Spongebob on YouTube. He can pay by redeeming TOKENS or he can pay with real money for the full episode or combine both. (It’s all streaming anyway! It’s like TV a la carte.)

Now, what about the “Jim and his weird cat” clips. Who pays for these 5 secs ads? Well, it’s like Google’s Adsense, it’s small outfits who purchase so many spots. You can buy a thousand spots or ten thousand spots to be randomly placed on clips or based on the clip’s TAGS and on the clip’s level of viewership. The outfit supplies the spot or the still and pays Google directly up front.

A system like this is not that difficult to implement. (If they’re real smart, they can have it work just the same on imbedded videos on other sites) Anyway, it’s fun for all involved and all get something out of it. Everybody is a winner especially Google who makes tons of money from the big guys but also… most importantly…from the long, long tail of all the little guys. Viewers are hooked to YouTube forever! Even if they’re just there to click on ads and forget about the clips… the most important is done. Money!

Here, you have it.

Twowan,

(If Google wants more ideas like this one, they can contact me. I’m the guy behind laboratoryfilms.com)

YouTube is just like Google - take time to build market share, then figure out monetization and go to town.

Google never started gushing money until years later when they perfected PPC that Overture had invented.

Google issued a statement in a 1998 paper they published about Google technology saying that ad-funded search engines are “inherently biased to the advertisers…the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want.

Read my analysis at http://mullingsbrothers.blogsp.....-user.html

I think Tech./Crunch people have a short memory.

As @31 was mentioning, if google come up with a workable ad-product…. the only problem is that as an enterprise google would still be a middle-ranking search site at best, probably taken over by the other top-3 if it hadn’t stolen the idea from Bill Gross of PPC advertising, and then buying Applied Semantics.

Yahoo and Aol simply have more breadth and depth of content.

To date they have not yet demonstrated any actual product, on the other they did blimming well buy Neven Vision (which was on my fantasy M & A list for years) and together with other technology they probably already have the ideas if not tech. in place to eventually execute.

As a final note, people make this point about inappropriate content next to quality adverts, but that forgets 2 other things: no one seems to give a damn when the same happens with good adverts around crap network programming, and two, the whole point of the internet is accessibility of all to all by all -combine that with something like Co.’s XXXXXXXXXX and TXXXXXXX and you have a ready made solution!!!

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak

When their growth slows down, there’ll be tremendous pressure from shareholders to monetize the video site. By law, a public company must do what’s the best for its shareholders first - in the U.S.

This is one of the reasons there’s been so much pressure for Time Warner to divest of AOL from its shareholders, as it’s seen as holding back the stock.

One of the reasons for the article in Forbes is because the writers know YouTube could get in trouble if the major media content companies don’t deal with them, as that’s the primary means of monetizing video.

If the companies don’t make deals, YouTube may hold a lot of market share, but it would be irrelevant in the long term, as other sites like Hulu, which people really like, make all the online video money.

For some to say that Google is just holding back and building market share is only partly true, as well as saying it should be a site used as a loss leader. A loss leader to what? No one is going to use Google search because they hear about YouTube. People are already doing that.

The truth is Google has no idea how to make money off it, other than through professional content. At this time the overall poor relationship with traditional media companies is probably the major reason holding them back.

Even assuming the numbers thrown out be Forbes are somewhat accurate, when taking into account expenses, there probably isn’t much, if any, profit.