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"YouTube may be dominating the Web video world in traffic - hugely so - but it hasn\u2019t yet been made into the moneymaking heavyweight its parent company, Google, wishes it to be.\nThat may be changing, say Quentin Hardy and Evan Hessel of Forbes.com. Though the company - or, more specifically, its proprietor, Google, isn\u2019t one to share numbers as to the its precise revenue stream, the site is purportedly en route to bag $200 million in revenue by the end of the year, and may increased that figure by 75% or more in 2009. That would amount to $350 million. Small change? According to Google\u2019s overall annual returns, yes. Still, as Google\u2019s chief executive, Eric Schmidt has said in weeks past, one of the company\u2019s primary focuses now is to tap much more heavily the advertising potential of the video site. And the area it undoubtedly recognizes as more financially effective today than any other is premium content laced with in-video advertisements. (eMarketer says industry wide spending on Web video advertisement will reach $1.35bn this year. Google serves a rough 38% of video streams, no other site taking north of 4%, according to comScore. Do the math. Room to grow its bank account? Absolutely.)\nSo far, however, YouTube hasn\u2019t been met with gratifying critiques of its efforts to present marketing spots within clips, so it cannot satisfy its want and need to make more dough. My own assessment of the reasoning for the collectively negative response given to in-video advertisements is that the size of the distraction relative to the video itself is simply too imposing. The video window is small in and of itself. To diminish the viewing area with an ad overlaid on the bottom third of the clip, regardless of its transparency, is to cause frustration on the part of the viewer. If YouTube were to expand the default dimensions of its window whilst maintaining general site performance, viewers would likely be more accepting of such marketing efforts. What\u2019s more, if Google so chose, premium content providers (television studios and podcasters) could arrange to have pre-roll, mid-roll, and/or post-roll video advertisements shown within the confines of custom pages created for their YouTube based video catalogues, increasing considerably Google\u2019s per-playback net return.\nGoogle is reported to have closely analyzed responses to its in-video advertisements and had found that banner ads displayed in the bottommost portion of the video window proved the most popular of the variety trialled (or least unpopular, depending on one\u2019s perspective), with pre-rolls being the least promising. I\u2019m one to suspect that antipathy for pre-rolls is conditional on both the type and technical quality of content delivered to viewers. If, say, a full 22-minute sitcom from CBS were to be laced with a couple of 15-second advertisements, a la Hulu, and presented in window generously sized, viewers might show to be surprisingly accepting.\nGetting back to the financial details of present-day YouTube, Forbes also presents numbers as to per-day front page advertising, as well as the cost associated with companies\u2019 establishment of branded channels. As far as front page advert placement is concerned, YouTube takes some $175,000 a piece, with a commitment by the advertiser to pay \u201C$50,000 or more in ads on Google and YouTube.\u201D And branded channels? $200,000 a pop.\nYouTube could probably add to those figures a good amount in the near future, but it unfortunately has yet to develop these premium branded pages to the point that viewers could consume all associated content within them without being pushed to standard, generic video pages upon selection of particular clips. If it were to establish a soft wall around such content, keeping network viewers within the network\u2019s personal YouTube-based cloud, it would likely help to secure more partnerships and subsequently increase the site\u2019s bottom line.\nOf course another reason for laggardly revenue generation is that a great deal of untapped advertising power on YouTube can be blamed on marketers\u2019 hesitation, which has been spoken of on numerous occasions in the past year or so. Marketers fear the purchase placements that might land beside user-generated videos, and thus have themselves wrongly associated with unsavory and potentially damaging content. Therefore, in a parallel effort to further solidify premium channels, it would seem a natural move for Google to promote an option for advertisers to target viewers of those specific channels, much as broadcast networks do via the more traditional means of over the air or cable-based transmissions.\nThere\u2019s really no question that YouTube will achieve a good amount of financial success, eventually. The website continues to chart rather remarkable growth, and so it would seem in marketers\u2019 best interests to serve the audience. To fail to do so would be, well, illogical. Yet, as the moment, YouTube hasn\u2019t made a killing, as it were. Something tells me that it would indeed start to make that happen in a big way if it were to address and amend its weaknesses and allow for a more refined premium video viewing experience where it is in greatest demand."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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