Monetizing YouTube

YouTube is starting to answer the question of how they intend to monetize the service. We all knew that banner and text ads weren’t the solution for a video service. According to this piece from MediaPost, they’ve settled on "participatory video ads" plus "brand channels".

The participatory video ad is on the upper right in this screen shot and is a video ad for the new Rockstar Games offering Bully (which we’ll probably be seeing a lot of this fall in our house).

When you click on that video, you’ll be taken to a "brand channel", in this case the Rockstar Games channel where you will see more video ads for Rockstar products. Here’s a screenshot of what the Rockstar Games channel looks like in YouTube.

This plan makes sense to me. It’s a "native advertising system" that works well within the social viral community that YouTube has become.

Here’s the video for Bully in case you are curious about the game.