YouTube to Share Ad Revenues With YouTubers

Posted on January 27, 2007

YouTube is planning to share in ad revenues with Youtubers. A BBC News story says the system will launch in a couple months. It will only be available to YouTubers who own the full copyright of the videos they upload. BBC News says the ad system will "use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film."

The BBC article says any pre-roll ads will be short -- about 3 seconds short.

The audience of the YouTube website will not have to put up with overly long "pre-roll" adverts. Mr Hurley said a clip of three seconds length was one of the options, although the details had not been worked out yet.

Three seconds doesn't seem very long but YouTube has to be careful -- it won't take much to turn off users and send them flocking to one of the many competing video sharing sites. It is even possible that no form of pre-roll will work no matter how short it is. TechCrunch describes a much different video advertising strategy from Ad Brite, called In Video.

YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley made the announcement at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In his speech, Hurley also talks about YouTube's plans to protect the copyrights of music and video publishers.

The BBC also notes that Revver, another video sharing site, already has a revenue sharing model in place. Metacafe is another video sharing site with a producer rewards program. Break.com also pays for some content according to a Lifehacker post. Down the road some of the video sharing websites may offer to pay more for exclusive access to content. Until then many video content producers will probably try out multiple video sharing websites to see how and where they can earn the most revenue from their videos.