Advertising comes to YouTube video
Posted 22 October 2007 at 8:29AM by Simon Dickson in Website development
It had to happen: Google has finally started to offer its famous context-sensitive advertising alongside - or more accurately, on top of - YouTube videos. So does this mean you'll see adverts superimposed on your home videos? No... not yet, anyway.
Initially only available to US-based sites, AdSense video units are described on Google's blog as 'a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player'. You decide you want to have some video content on your website; you link your Google AdSense account to your YouTube account; then you embed some HTML code in your page template, as with any other YouTube video.
You then get a video player, fed with 'video content from select YouTube partners who have chosen to make their videos available to publishers in the AdSense network along with targeted advertising.' So it's important to realise what this is, and what it isn't.
Google can decide what videos go well with your site, based on its analysis of the words on your page. Or you can choose content 'from pre-selected premium playlists by Category or Provider'. But for now at least, you can't just pick any old YouTube user (eg yourself), and display his/her videos with revenue-generating adverts on top.
True to form, Google has tried to satisfy both users and advertisers. The ads appear in a semi-transparent bar at the bottom of the screen, which does draw your attention, but isn't half as obtrusive as it could have been; it doesn't come close to the sensory assault of something like Sky Sports News on a Saturday afternoon, for example. If you don't want your viewing to be interrupted, there's a 'close' button to make them go away - or you'll find several links taking you back to the video's 'homepage' on YouTube, where you can see it in its full glory.
See what the future looks like on this Google example, or learn more from the 'how to' videos on the project's own YouTube channel. But if this is the moment you decide YouTube's going too commercial, TechCrunch helpfully lists more than a dozen alternative services, with their various tech specs.
Tags: adsense, advertising, google, pay-per-click, techcrunch, video, youtube
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