Google and YouTube
Raquel Peters
YouTube vs. Boob Tube
Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for You Tube. Google realized
what we all already knew. People want to share and create content
online. You Tube gets 65,000 uploads a day.
TV advertising was broken and You Tube could be a reallocation of
the $67 billion advertisers spent on TV ads.
Google would need and believes they can have
•A business model to convert the site into an advertising
medium
•A big change in the worldwide media economy. they now have
revenue of $9.3 billion.
Until just now content was produced by Hollywood, on TV and bandwidth
cost were prohibitive for videos to be watched online. Jeff Jarvis says, “The
line between TV and Internet TV is about to disappear.”
YouTube started with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen who wanted something
like Flickr for sharing videos. They started in a garage in California and
created a way to embed videos on other sites
Hurley wanted to make a business out of “monkeyvison.” he went to New
York to convince advertisers to give him money to broadcast themselves.
Problem
They had been, but it was a series of ruin. Advertisers were fleeing, show
quality declining down a spiral. CBS tried to cultivate new online
distribution channels by putting premiers of heroes, and Studio 60 online
and the CW put Everybody Hates Chris and others online.
They think people will watch more online, but it hurts local affiliates who
make money by selling commercial space within network programs,
Internet bypasses them.
The old model was collapsing, online is the new era.
Before the YouTube acquisition Google video was trying to find a way
to target ads to relevant content. In one approach posters were
asked to close caption their videos using a Google tool, and the
text was searched for metadata.
They have the audience, but now they need to create a revenue
model, which Is hard with a user generated media.
Problem
Where to put ads. Before the acquisition, YouTube refused to sell ads
appended to either end of a video to safeguard the viewer
experience. Thy don’t want to be intrusive. Who is to say they will
watch the ad, so the only space available is adjacent to the video
window, which is good for the host, but a lot of the videos are
posted other places like MySpace and not on the homepage.
Monetize them, but won’t
1. Advertisers can wait until their ads make it on YouTube and hope
they go viral, which YouTube encourages as long as a free post is
accompanied by a paid one. YouTude doesn’t make money.
The next big issue, is protecting intellectual property. Hard to control
people posting material that they don’t own. Revver example
You Tube has been relying on safe harbor provisions of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act to insulate itself from liability. Take
videos off, ask for cooperation
Rumors that copyright holders were waiting for someone like Google
to acquire YouTube for lawsuits.
Google made deals with various companies to detect copyright
material and remove it if necessary
Risks
Advertisers may not be willing to risk putting ads on YouTube
and associating themselves with violence, pornography, hate
speech etc. meow mix example and few AdWords
Uploaders have done a good job at policing their own space, but
the bottom line is they cannot control content on their site.
Basically, everyone wants to see what everyone else is doing,
seeing and enjoying, something to talk about. They can email
links easily, and were in a time of people wanting a shared
cultural context, people like things they can discuss, which Is
why YouTube will survive.
How Google Should Monetize
YouTube With AdWords and
AdSense
•Since the acquisition, Its not just as simple as Google slapping an
AdSense ad unit on the page, and YouTube has tried this in the past.
•Google began experimenting with video ads and has done a lot to
promote them, for advertisers to begin using them in their ad
campaigns as well as publishers, encouraging them to use video ad
friendly ad unit sizes and enabling image ads. They have a lot of
videos running on the AdSense network, but they haven’t said how
much.
•The most obvious approach for video ads is what they
experimented with in the their MTV video ad beta-inserting paid
commercials with the streaming video. They were 30 seconds and
many for branding purposes. The user wouldn’t have to click on
them. This could be done on YouTube, at the beginning of short
pieces or during commercial breaks.
Problem
Since YouTube videos are ad free, they could alienate the views by
suddenly putting 30 second ads at the begging of every video.
Shorter ads may work however.
Advertising Solutions
1. Advertisers could pick which videos they wanted their ads to
appear on, which would leave the majority of videos ads free. This
would be good if the video went viral.
2. Google could offer the ability for advertisers to pay for better
placement of certain types of videos, such as infomercials or longer
length commercials about their product or service for better
exposure. Could be similar to the sponsored listings versus the
organic listings in the regular Google search results, but with videos.
3. For non-video ads, Google could supply contextually targeted ads
based on keywords added by members when they upload the video,
but YouTube is also filled with keyword spam, where members stuff a
huge amount of keywords into their video descriptions so they show
up for terms the video has nothing about.
4. It would be beneficial if advertisers could site target their specific
text-ads to appear on specific video pages, or for specific video
search results that would target YouTube only, instead of the entire
Google or content network.
-Snowboard company targets just YouTube visitors who
search for snowboarding videos by keyword, having the
only appear on YouTube.
5. Google could allow publishers to monetize from YouTube videos
they post to their blog or website.
6. An alternative is to allow those who upload original videos to
YouTube, to use their publisher ID to make money when someone
views their video right on YouTube. Someone could go on an upload
binge.
Problems
•People uploading content they don’t have permission to upload,
whether it be clips from a favorite show or an illegal recording from a
concert or movie in the theater. Hard to control.
•If someone uploads a naughty video and puts it on YouTube and an
advertiser finds his video ad playing at the beginning of the latest
celebrity sex tape, it’s possible even with the flagging system, but its
not practical to have someone review all the videos on YouTube
•Overall the acquisition could push Google’s AdWords video ads to
the next level, in a way that publishes, advertisers, and Google make
money.
A Look Ahead at Google and
YouTube
•Google and YouTube remain separate entities after the acquisition
and they continue to play their own individual strengths, Google's
being search and innovating, YouTube’s being a leading content
destination with a base of users who create watch and share videos.
•Google search results already contain links to content that’s hosted
on YouTube, and YouTube video results appear in the Google Video
search index. Once a user clicks the link they are taken to
YouTube.com to watch the video.
•Soon Google video will be so comprehensive, a user can search a
video regardless of where it may be hosted.
•People want images, videos, websites from the search results.
•Google supports YouTube by providing access to search and
monetization platforms. Google works with a wide set of content
providers, grouping together high quality video content from
providers with high quality ads offering them as play lists which
publishes can select from and display on their AdSense sites,
This is all Google’s continuing way to give the highest quality
search results possible.