As Google has acknowledged before, monetizing YouTube has been a major challenge for the Internet giant, even though it is one of the web's most visited sites. Now, Google is trying out post-roll ads on the popular online video service. Currently, as NewTeeVee notes, these post-roll ads only appear if you do not click on the overlay ads while a video is playing. Google has tested post-roll ads before, but in these earlier versions, users had to initiate the ads themselves, while these new ads will play automatically.
For now, these new ads only appear on a small number of videos uploaded by YouTube's official partners. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was experimenting with both post- and pre-roll ads, though thankfully, it looks like the company has decided against using pre-roll ads for now.
It's important to note that Google has been hesitant to roll out ads for all of its YouTube inventory because of the possible copyright issues involved. However, given that cost of running a bandwidth-hungry service like YouTube and the number of daily visitors, it only makes sense for Google to keep looking for new strategies to make at least some money off the service.
For now, these post-roll ads are not very intrusive, but they do signal a shift towards a more aggressive push to monetize YouTube and we wouldn't be surprised to see Google experimenting with pre-roll ads in the near future as well.
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Google always finds a way to make money through search and media. I am sure they will find a way to make money of the #3 website in America.
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Posted by: Frank Grzesik | October 2, 2008 10:44 AM
Who's making the money here other than YouTube? If RRW embeds a YouTube video and 10,000 people watch the ad at the end, does RWW get any share of the rev generated?
-=Vin
Posted by: Vin | October 2, 2008 11:57 AM
Post-roll ads aren't intrusive but I have to wonder what the abandon rate is. YouTube must be trying everything at this point to monetize its inventory.
Posted by: Alexandra Wharton | October 2, 2008 4:05 PM
I don't believe, with a site as large as Youtube, there will be one magic bullet that will work (pre/post roll ads) It probably depends on the content, or who is posting the video.
There are many other options (and continually growing) for monetizing this type of service.
Just as Alexandra mentioned, the post-roll will probably have a high opt out rate. And Pre-rolls are will not go over well for a service that has for years run with no pre/post ads what-so-ever. I think the solution will be an ad service that uses the user to opt in to view an ad, or interactively click on something in the video for more information. This will also provide a much better ROI.
Posted by: Matt Sullivan | October 7, 2008 9:27 AM