The latest press around Google Inc. suggests that the world leading search engine has developed their first serious strategy involving the use of the video content that they have been acquiring since purchasing online video community YouTube.
The wider plan by Google involves an increased effort in distribution of content across their massive network of advertising partners (adsense). Obviously this content will be supported by advertisements, no surprises here. The plan does, however, involve a new move by Google to also distribute video content from youtube across the same advertising network. The video content will be surrounded by advertisements.
The revenue that derives from the video content will be shared with the publisher, although it is not clear yet as to what the exact splits/percentages will be. Christian Oestlien, product manager for Google Adsense says, “We are creating incremental distribution for our content providers.”
Google has been the clear winner from the rise and rise of online media to date. Their AdWords advertising product has pretty much revolutionized online marketing. The thing is, adwords is text based and we all know that ‘rich’ media has a huge future online. So when Google acquired youtube in late 2006 they made their intentions clear. Google wanted to leverage the growth in online videos and other similar media that fall into that ‘rich’ category.
Up until yesterday it was not entirely clear as to how Google intended to monetize the ridiculous amount of video content that has been uploaded onto youtube. It will be interesting to see how this new rich media strategy from Google evolves. How do you think Google can best utilise the content on youtube, will targeted video ads be as effective as text based ads?
