Discover more with YouTube's new feature

Because of YouTube's popularity more and more companies are starting to use it as a marketing medium. And with the daily video submissions growing, it is getting harder to promote your video and get it popular. Recently YouTube added a feature to help cross promote videos at the end of each video.

YouTube cross promotion

The image above shows that I played the video, "Mark Cuban - HP Ad". After the video was completed showcases for other videos appeared. These videos were random and three new showcases appeared every 11 seconds because I did not click on one. By doing this YouTube will

  1. Keep visitors on their site longer which increases their page views, thus increasing CPM (impression based) advertisement revenue.
  2. Help promote other videos which will get videos more exposure, which is good for both viewers and contributors.
  3. Increase the potential of unique revenue models such as charging companies for end of video showcase links to movie trailers.

At the moment YouTube is burning through a lot of money and their current way to bring in revenue is from impression based banner ads and contextual advertisements. Now with this new feature, YouTube can charge companies to promote their videos. Companies pay for airtime on TV, so why would they not pay for airtime on the web. It would be cheaper for them, the results can be tracked better and they could get a lot more then a 30 second spot. YouTube might not take this revenue stream route, but if I was in charge of advertising for a company that paid for airtime on TV I would not mind paying for airtime on YouTube if I meant guaranteed views and greater accountability.

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Reader Comments (3)

Big Time Chicago Golfer, August 4, 2006

interesting, i had noticed the videos at the end, but thanks for explaining the implications.

mike, August 4, 2006

Yep that feature is copied from metacafe.com. Youtube is catching up =)

Sticky, August 4, 2006

That's quite true, but also note that it is getting this from an xml feed which means that they can potentially allow RSS or remote parsing of videos.