YouTube Puts Placement for User Videos Up For Auction
This is so cynical it just might work. Google announced this afternoon that YouTube will now allow video publishers, no matter who they are, to bid for sponsored placement for their videos on the site. The program will be based on Adsense technology and is essentially just that - paid search results for user published videos.
This is a radical opening of the previously white-listed YouTube monetization strategies. Have you made a video of your band performing its new single, or your company's new product demonstration or your nonprofit group's expose of corporate misbehavior? If you'd like to have that video highlighted on the site, now you can - for a price. What price? What can you bid?
Apparently the famous saying that "Freedom of the Press is available to anyone who can afford to buy one" was leaving too much money on the table. With Web 2.0 (plus auctions) the whole long tail can put in whatever money they have in order to buy visibility.
The service appears to be having technical difficulties at launch, I was unable to bid for improved placement of a video interview with my dog or of myself threatening to eat a live baby chicken, content that in my naive days I expected to soar to the top of the charts on its own merit.
YouTube started displaying advertisements inside selected partner videos a year and a half ago and moved to include selected videos in AdSense campaigns just over a year ago. We don't know how well those campaigns have monetized but both of them felt less creepy than today's announcement.
We'll be curious to see how many of YouTube's publishers are interested in purchasing views on the site and what that will do to the content community there.
At the very least, the class of slime balls that take money to inflate YouTube popularity numbers for their clients will now face a pricing challenge at the hands of the auction market.
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This would be a more useful service if they allowed you to direct traffic to videos OFF of YouTube.com ... It would then be much closer to what AdWords is - a true Search Marketing tool.
Frank, I think you're right about that. I wouldn't be surprised to see that come next. for now it looks like a crass grab for money for video views to me
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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November 12, 2008 2:27 PM
It would be interesting to see the reaction of this vs. when AdWords first came out.
Posted by: Frank Sinton
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November 12, 2008 2:48 PM
This looks very similar to a function on MP3.com back in the glory days of the site as an indie music platform. They used to have a periodic auction (started weekly, tended to stretch) for a paid 10 placement on the front page.
MP3.com also used a unique anti-sniper model that extended the deadline for the auction by a few minutes if a bid was placed in the dying seconds. That little trick really raised the price tag for the top spot. If Youtube adds that little bit of tech to the bidding, this could be a cashcow on steroids.
It also means that it's not a valid indication of what's naturally popular within the YouTube ranks. I'm quite sure the system is gamed on views but outright bidding for placement doesn't sit will with me.
Hope it works out for them and the bidders involved.
As long as they make it clear which videos have paid for placement, which videos are the most popular, which are editors choice, etc, I think that it will be a good thing. It will be a moneymaker for YouTube and harmless to the audience.
The net audience is pretty good at selective vision, after all -- I've seen statistics that show 80% of the clicks off a google search go to the organic links, for example, and clickthroughs for banner ads are usually around 0.10% on publisher websites.