This article ran in the New York Times yesterday. In the article, Clifford discusses Google’s recent announcement that it would begin to sell space on YouTube search results pages to advertisers in order to generate more revenue.
After an initial read, the article left me confused and puzzled. What kind of ads are they selling? Are these ads promoting peoples videos or are the promoting products? Are these advertisements next to the video, before it plays, or are they the video itself?
I read the article again, and from what I can understand Google is actually selling key words to individual video makers to promote their own videos. I can’t understand why. People will find your video and since no one is buying it and you are not trying to sell it, what’s the difference if it tops up first or last.
I feel like buying key words to get your video to pop up first in a search for “How to bake cookies” on YouTube is absurd.
However, later in the article if finally all made sense. If major advertising companies buy key words like McDonalds then they can have the advertisements that their company has worked on pop up first. Or if Pepsi buys the words soda commercial, then all you will see are Pepsi advertisements.
I think the idea is still kind of weak seeing that I am majoring in advertising. Some company executives share my view as well. They say that there are mostly kids on YouTube and it lacks professionalism.
Overall, I think that Google and YouTube are going to be surprised when this “advertising” strategy fails because they can’t control a niche market of their normal consumers. They could have come up with a better idea.
To read the whole article, follow this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/technology/internet/13youtube.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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