YouTube Monetization: More to Come

Cue the theme music from Jaws. First it was the InVideo ad layovers, then it was AdSense-monetized video players. Then the real genius began, with Click-to-Buy and Sponsored Videos. But it’s still coming. More monetization from YouTube!

YouTube’s Director of Content Partnerships, Jordan Hoffner, laid out their further plans for monetization and encouraged professional content providers and advertisers alike to turn to the site during his keynote at the OnScreen Media Summit Tuesday.

First, as if to combat the rumors he knew his address would generate that YouTube’s shying away from UGC, he highlighted a video of a skateboarding cat. No, really. Why, you ask? He pointed out that lots of advertisers are afraid of the cat—or rather, afraid of advertising on user-created videos on the site. However, he points out:

[The cat] is your friend, because the cat on the skateboard is what gets you your traffic. The trick is, how do you get the premium content in front of the audiences watching the UGC?

Hoffner had some ideas for that one, too, and not just VideoID, YouTube’s fingerprinting technology that allows content owners to control and even advertise on their content—whether they posted it or it’s been pirated by another user.

He also cited the example of a Monty Python DVD set that was languishing in Amazon’s rankings (in the five-digit range). The comedy troupe posted clips from the set on YouTube with a click-to-buy style referral to Amazon—and a week later, the set was #5 in Amazon’s rankings.

So despite how Hoffner began, his ultimate conclusion was that

“YouTube is a great place for premium content,” was the “bold idea” Hoffner presented during his keynote. “But we need to do a better job of creating areas where the user can go and know what they are going to get.”

I’ll definitely agree that as YouTube brings in more premium content, their site structure will need to adapt. Will their monetization efforts require a radical change, too? What do you think?