Posted on December 22, 2007 - by Ade | Visited 154 times, 2 so far today

Google and YouTube

This past weekend, I spent a few hours surfing through YouTube for user generated video content. Apart from watching funny videos of people doing the Soldier Boy dance, I also use the site to check for technology related videos. Most recently was the video broadcast of Google’s 2007 Analyst Day. The event was attended by many analysts interested in finding out what the company had in store for the future years to come.

I have always admired Google because of the way they revolutionized how we behave on the web. Consumers are constantly jumping for joy when Google rolls out a new product because all they require to use these products is to sit through a few contextual advertisements. Some people think their ultimate goal is to offer every imaginable service in return for showing ads to users who wish to use their suite of products.

My question has always been how they plan on monetizing YouTube? My favorite joy when surfing through Youtube is that I can spend hours on the site without seeing any obtrusive advertisement. I understand Google makes its money from displaying text ads next to relevant content, but I can’t help but wonder how they plan on duplicating the same model when it comes to the number one video sharing site.

I think they can get away with displaying non obtrusive ads on proprietary content of big TV stations, but spreading these ads to user generated content will definitely rub a lot of people the wrong way. My only solution thus far is to start off by capping the number of videos every user can view and advising them that some text or other form of rich media advertisement may be displayed once the cap has been exceeded. This strategy in my opinion will slowly sensitize their users with respect to seeing ads next to video content.

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