In an attempt to capitalize on traffic that happens off the main site, YouTube today announced a monetization program for embedded videos at the NewTeeVee conference in San Francisco.With an audience of 280 million viewers worldwide every month, and 44 percent of viewers watching videos on sites other than YouTube, a new revenue channel makes a lot of sense - for Google as well as its partners.]]> YouTube has been working on replicating the YouTube experience on other sites and this is a smart move given the consumption of online video is rapidly increasing worldwide; people want to watch video anywhere, anytime, on any device - not just on the YouTube homepage.
While YouTube added Adsense recently, with embeds, comes a different form of advertising; you can now control annotations, look at captions, and even search for other videos directly, regardless on where they are posted.
How does it work?
Advertisements appear on the bottom 20 percent of the screen (see image below) and last for about ten seconds, apparently the time recommended for maximum engagement. You can see it in action on Lisa Nova Live.
Image: Monetized YouTube embeds on Lisa Nova site
An interesting function that they've included is the ability to scroll though advertisements, and while we're not quite sure who would want to do that advertisers seem keen: you can now click through directly to the advertisers site.
Google certainly seems to be making an effort to monetize YouTube; adding Adsense yesterday, monetized embeds today, you have to wonder what's coming tomorrow.
What do you think?
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