Discussion Report: Google and YouTube
Raquel Peters
raquel.peters@duke.edu
This report summarizes the class discussion on “Google and YouTube”. The
assigned readings for this discussion were the articles “YouTube vs. Boob Tube,” by Bob
Garfield “How Google Should Monetize YouTube with AdWords and AdSense,” by
Jennifer Slegg, and “A Look Ahead at Google and YouTube” by Salar Kamangar, Vice
President, and Product Management.
[1] YouTube vs. Boob Tube
Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for You Tube. Today, TV advertising is
starting to break and while there are still some benefits to advertising on TV, a lot of
companies like Google are realizing that the Internet is a gold mind for economic
opportunity. They started to realize that people were using the Internet as a way for them
to share with other people and have something to talk about with friends. YouTube gets
65,000 hits a day and with heir popularity it was no wonder, Google wanted to take
advantage of it.
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.
And since fixing their own advertising avenues and gaining revenue of $9.3 billion
dollars, it seemed possible that they could do the same with YouTube. Chad Hurley and
Steve Chen started out of a garage, and wanted a way to embed videos on other sites.
They tried to get advertisers to fund them, but little did they know that problems were
already going on in the advertising industry. People were not watching commercials so
advertisers were pulling out and show quality was suffering. Some companies like CBS
tried to curtail this spiraling dilemma by putting shows online, but these show were
hurting local affiliates.
YouTube had refused to place ads in videos in an attempt to preserve the viewer
experience, but Google needed a way to make some revenue from ads. The only spot left
for ads was the area next to the videos, and advertisers could wait until there ads made it
onto YouTube, and then went viral for maximum exposure. Google also tried to use
metadata to help place relevant ads to videos, but it was hard for YouTube to control
what descriptions people put on the video, and the met data was limited, problems could
arrive such as:
1.
2.
A company for meow mix could want their ads under cat related videos
and then the ad could appear under videos of people killing cats.
An advertiser’s ad could appear at the front of a naughty video when
they did not want it to.
YouTube has the basic problem of not being able to control the content on their site even
with the flagging system they have in place and it just is not practical fro one person to go
through and look at all the videos for appropriate content. They also have to deal with
trying to prevent copyright infringement and people posting material that they have no
rights too. There demands a big level of trust with the users to keep this kind of material
off.
An example was explained abut Napster, and the fact that they were just uploading
material they did not own or have the right to post, and YouTube is simply just
transmitting information so they have some protection from the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
[2] How Google Should Monetize YouTube with AdWords and
AdSense
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.
Putting 30 second ads at the beginning of videos runs the risk of being intrusive to
the viewer. Some solutions to the problem are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Advertisers could choose what videos they want their ads too show up
under, like AdWords
They could pay for better positioning of videos, and it could be similar
to the sponsored listings versus the organic listings in the regular
Google search results, but with videos
The members could put in keywords to match with the video, but they
runt he risk of spam and irrelevant keywords and descriptions.
They could have the video just show up on YouTube and not the whole
Google or content network, for example:
-Snowboard company targets just YouTube visitors who search for snowboarding
videos by keyword, having the only appear on YouTube.
5.
6.
Google could allow publishers to monetize from YouTube videos they
post to their blog or website, like AdSense
They could allow those who upload original videos to YouTube, to use
their publisher ID to make money when someone views their video
right on YouTube.
[3] A Look Ahead at Google and YouTube
Google and YouTube have remained separate entities since the acquisition and
they both have continued to play to their strengths. Google has its search and innovation
of new services and YouTube is a leading content site with a user base that uses and
shares videos. Google provides the monetization platform and the support that YouTube
needs to continue to be successful. Google already has result links for videos that when
clicked will take the user directly to YouTube to watch the video. They realized that
people want videos, websites, and pictures in their results, and they have continue to try
to address these desires and future develop their search capabilities.
References
[1] YouTube vs. Boob Tube
[2] How Google Should Monetize YouTube with AdWords and AdSense
[3] A Look Ahead at Google and YouTube