Google's YouTube is perhaps the fastest growing website on the internet(?). Many have wondered how Google is going to turn YouTube's traffic into revenue. Here's one way: by planting contextually relevant ads on websites throughout the internet that embed YouTube videos.
Yesterday, I embedded a YouTube video "Twitter Whore" in my blog post "Is Twitter just for twits?" On the embedded video in our blog, you will see an overlay of advertisements. The interesting thing is the advertisements are not related to Twitter. Rather, they are related to the content of our website -- direct marketing, mailing lists, etc.
In contrast, if you go to the same video on YouTube, you don't see these ads.
This got me thinking... there's got to be millions of websites with embedded YouTube videos (because they've made it so easy). Now Google can insert ads on all these websites without permission and without paying any commission. My hat is off to Google.
What's to stop a competitor from advertising on my website if I have a YouTube video posted? Nothing.
I am guessing that YouTube will introduce a "premium player" that supresses advertisements and plays at higher quality. For a fee, of course. And many would be willing to pay for that. Again, my hat is off to Google!
P.S. YouTube has surpassed Yahoo to become #2 search engine.
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