Marketing Pilgrim

Google’s YouTube has announced the expansion of their partnership program to include many popular video content creators. The move seeks to offer a way for popular videos to monetize their popularity, by sharing in some of the revenue YouTube collects from AdSense ads.

Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work.

Before you start fantasising about the hundreds of pennys you’ll surely make from that video fo Granny’s teeth falling out, you should know that the program is not open to all, just a select invited few.

Interestingly, YouTube’s decided not to open this up to every publisher and they’re also content not to use any kind of in-stream advertising options - instead relying on AdSense ads adjacent to the video.

TechCrunch is as perplexed about this move as I am, saying…

Why not roll out the option of in-video/ pre-roll advertising to all YouTube content creators? Whilst advertising may not be welcome by every one, Google knows the advertising market and it can credit much of its financial success to date to its inclusive embrace of content creators…

Still, if you know Google, you know they never simply roll a product out to everyone. First comes the pre-beta - with just a select few invited - then they allow those users to invite others, before a full roll-out and five more years in “beta”.

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