Friday, March 28, 2008

YouTube is watching...

Google has implemented a new monitoring program called YouTube Insight in an effort to give content providers the ability to gather information on where and by whom their videos are being watched. Information is broken down by day and tracks information such as what state or country is viewing a given video, how many times its been played amongst other data.

Google hopes to use this program to bolster its advertising revenue coming from YouTube. This program helps keep away pesky embedded commercials, a growing source of ad revenue for large media corporations, and instead incentivizes companies to purchase ads that are shaped for a specific audience, much like television commercials.

While similar tools have always been available to paying marketers, this new program will be available to anyone who submits a video. In addition, paid advertisers will also have access to additional tools that keep track of statistics such as how many users stopped the video at a given interval.

I'm glad to see such tracking mechanisms in place, and I hope this pays off for Google. I for one HATE commercials before watching content I request and if Google can make money a different way, go for it.

1 comment:

Sarah Stanger said...

It would be interesting to watch how viral videos spread across geographic regions. I'm curious if they would quickly spread across the country and then gain in popularity or if they would become very popular in one region and then spread to others.