Google is having quite a bit of trouble on the business side figuring out how to monetize YouTube and make it legit. Now it appears to be following up on the technology side, sending Shashi Seth, formerly product lead on search, to YouTube. His assignment? Monetization products.
A tipster calls Seth (pictured at left) “Google’s best product manager.” He confirms the switch via email: “Yes, I moved to YouTube on Feb 1st to head their monetization efforts. That’s all I can tell you for now.” Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed video advertising at the company’s most recent earnings call, saying the company was looking to get more creative than pre-rolls. The week before that, Chad Hurley made waves by saying YouTube hoped to figure out a way to pay its creators.
Monetizing User Generated Content (UGC) is the name of the game in 2007 and a tall order for GOOG/Youtube. It is not clear though what type of UGC is the best route to monetize the Youtube platform: creative content or communities/social networks. The latter would actually make great use of the GOOG-MySpace-Youtube synergies.
I just wrote some thoughts about Monetizing User Generated Content, following the Media Summit in New York last week: http://phc.typepad.com/infonomics/2007/02/monetizing_user.html
Very interesting. Must be more complex than they initially thought. I wonder what solution they will implement that will keep everyone (users and big media companies) happy. Watch this space!
Well, for what Google paid I suspect its quite a priority :)
Its an interesting problem, though I suspect YouTube will need quite some investment before anything other than simple ads are possible.
Mid Roll Overlay Ads are not that inovative anymore Google …They are just less annoying .
Would someone please blip my video already!
Shashi does rock. He’ll do good stuff for YouTube :)
One of the bigger challenges facing user contributed content is the fear that Brands have of the association with inappropriate material. Affiliate marketers are always on hand to sweep the floor of leftover inventory but they also increase the disinterest of brand marketers. Solving this puzzle will open the gates to the bridge across the digital divide but publishers are going to have to leave behind current revenue models to make the transition which will take a boardroom of faithful followers. It will be interesting to see who is the first to take the journey.