YouTube, Google and Embedding Videos

Posted on October 20, 2006

YouTube has removed about 30,000 videos after complaints from a Japanese organization representing Japanese content providers. Good Morning Silicon Valley notes that this means less "lizard vs. humans-in-meat-hats game show clips." Some have argued that YouTube's torrid growth has been boosted by people posting video clips they don't own the copyright to and by people using copyrighted content (like music) in their homemade videos.

A BusinessWeek article compares MySpace and YouTube and notes that many MySpace profiles have embedded YouTube videos.

The main point of potential conflict is the millions of YouTube videos that are embedded on the profiles of MySpace users. Google is expected to integrate advertising into YouTube videos produced by professionals and amateurs alike. As a result, Google could soon have the ability to stream ads to MySpace users who are viewing YouTube videos embedded onto their MySpace pages. The question is whether News Corp. will get a slice of that revenue, and if so, how much.

MySpace would prefer its users embed videos using the MySpace video technology. They would probably like MySpace users embedding MySpace videos even more now that Google owns YouTube. A CNN Money article says Google's purchase of YouTube may have been much more about ads and convergence of television and the Internet than content. Google wants to create a technology and platform to help advertisers sell ads on video content just like they have done with text.

Google's most successful search advertisers are those who methodically experiment with multiple messages. Sometimes they try thousands of combinations of different texts displayed in response to various search keywords, quickly - often in hours - eliminating those that don't attract the clicks of users and refining those that do, until they arrive at the ideal combination of message and keyword.
A similar process of refinement takes place in Google's AdSense service. It places ads on the Web sites of affiliates with which it shares ad revenues.
I don't know if they're right, but Google's managers now seem to believe they can do the same thing with print, radio and TV, albeit with much of the testing taking place on the more immediate and low-cost medium of the Internet. Buying YouTube will give Google a platform on which advertisers can experiment with TV ads in different forms.

Meanwhile, Download Squad writes a note to video content providers telling them to hurry up and provide video content with embedding codes so we can get videos directly from them instead of from YouTube.com.

So, movie studios, TV networks, ad agencies, and record companies, here's my plea: Let me advertise your stuff on my web site. Hire some smart folks to put together a Flash player like YouTube's for your site, give me HTML snippets to copy and paste into my blog, and let my visitors see your stuff, and your ads, without the extra clicks and without waiting for your lame Windows Media Player to load. Don't make me go to YouTube for what you, in the interest of your shareholders, should be giving me yourselves.

That's great advice but will the content providers listen? Most likely they are already working on something but by the time they have it ready Google will probably already be offering a video version of AdWords.