YouTube Ads Target Partners Content

After the introduction last week of YouTube’s long awaited ad model it is apparent that the ads will run on the 3,000 professional content partners and 70 independent partner channels.

It was generally expected that the YouTube ads would be running across the consumer generated content, and considering that Google bought YouTube for its user generated content, this comes as a bit of a shock. So do Google now consider that user generated content will not be profitable.

Considering that smaller sites such as ManiaTV have begun to drop free user generated video in favor of professionally generated content. “Premium is the deal advertisers are buying,” said Peter Clemente, ManiaTV chief marketing officer.

The Doritos Super Bowl spot/campaign wins a gold Lion at Cannes and costs $12 to produce. YouTube now has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards.

However not everyone agrees and Troy Young CMO of Videoegg knows that advertising can work with user generated content because his company are doing it. They screen videos to make sure that they’re safe for advertisers

Google’s new [tag-tec]YouTube ad formats[/tag-tec] are graphic overlays that cover the bottom 20% of the screen and go away if not clicked after 10 seconds. “This solution isn’t necessarily intended for all YouTube videos but on a select group of partner sites,” said Eileen Naughton, director-media platforms at Google. YouTube awards partner status to video creators who produce good serial content and abide by copyright rules.

The format was pioneered by Videoegg, which has sold it for more than a year to advertisers such as General Motors, Ford, Unilever and Nestlé. It screens videos to make sure they’re safe for advertisers. Plus, Mr. Young added, if you’re a young-skewing brand, it’s pretty hard to ignore user-generated-content sites, as youth spend so much of their time on them. More recently, entrants such as ScanScout are trying to isolate brand-safe video content.

YouTube, for its part, insists it isn’t veering away from its user-generated roots. “I wouldn’t say the site is necessarily evolving in the sense of leading toward these monetizing partners directly, but users will get an opportunity by joining partner programs to be rewarded like any other content provider,” said Shiva Rajaraman, YouTube product manager. “Moving forward, we’ll expand that program over time. There’s always a home for user-generated content on YouTube.”

It’s just that, increasingly, the user-generated videos have to compete for attention with professional, premium content. Notably, a music video from Avril Lavigne is beginning to approach Judson Laipply’s “Evolution of Dance” as YouTube’s most viewed video.