I am thinking back to Eric Schmidt's video at the web 2.0 expo..

He essentially divides YouTube into two different sectors: one segment encapsulate the well-known shows; things like the Daily Show, Colbert, and other IP that are already broadcast on another medium. The other segment is the user-generated content "phenomena", as Schmidt says.

Couple this with what the article says:

"The idea is to generate long-promised revenues that Google can share with the more than 1,000 “premium” content creators whose video material is available on YouTube, Ms. Reider said."

My current read of this goes as follows:

The premium content are going to be well-established shows. A way to bring corporate content-producers (Viacom) into the tent and give them a way to be a partner and generate revenue, while pushing them towards the online model. What this means is that YouTube will be pushing ad's on things like The Daily Show, and not Mom & Pop's VideoBlog.

Additionally, I suspect they will have ways to bring Mom & Pop into the premium scheme if they take off with high-volume traffic. But it would be an opt-in to advertising and not a blanket roll-out of ads everyone that might scare away their traffic.

Does that fit?

oh well they have to keep up with the competation.. Joost has signed up 3 large players too

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625683

One thing to keep in mind is they also need to identify the content owner, and in the case of stuff like the Daily Show, the uploader wasn't Viacom, and identifying the real owner is a big moderation problem. But this is the long tail of videos which seem to make up a bulk of what people watch, embed and so on... it's hard to imagine Google/ YouTube doesn't want to make ad money from all those "unknown" videos by at least including a single clearly separated ad after the video, which seems like it can't hurt acceptance way too much.

One way to approach this content owner issue would be to use statistical sampling – "from 1,000 random clips checked, 15 are Viacom content, 20 belong to Company X, 10 to Company Y" etc. – and then introduce a kind of video tax. Let's say 25% goes to YouTube, 25% goes to the 1000 premium content owners pool (like Viacom, which then gets 1.5% of that share), 50% goes to whoever uploaded the video (and if the video is embedded, the 50% will be split into halves, one for the video uploader, the other for the embedder or something).

I would assume the Claim Your Content tool will be in place before ads are turned on 100% for videos.

I am sure that while this will make money, it will be terrible for every user not making money.

MJ Rich – None of the users currently make money off of their videos on YouTube so it wouldn't be anything different to them.

Will Myspace allow YouTube clips on the page with ads in it

Hashim – Myspace probably won't allow videos with ads unless Myspace gets a cut of the revenue – as Philipp says, the "embedder" might get a share.

And as Colin says, Claim Your Content would need to be in place as well. One of YouTube's defenses against copyright infringement claims is that they're not slapping ads on unlicensed material and profiting (directly) from it.

But imagine this scenario:

YouTube monetizes "Premium" content (where Google knows the provider and is confident of the copyright status), and splits the revenue with the provider and the embedder. Google's already doing this on Google Video (check out some Charlie Rose shows with 15-second spot showing half way through the video). This ensures wide distribution since Myspace, Facebook, even competitors have incentive to embed the videos.

Then if Big Media partners with Google through Claim Your Content, any "long tail" clip that matches a partner's content gets an ad, and the revenue is split with the parter. No need for take-down notices, since the partner is profiting from the use of the material. If a user lip syncs to the latest Warner Music track, their video will get a brief ad if the tune matches the Claim Your Content filter.

Other "long tail" clips that aren't from "premium" providers and also don't match anything in the Claim Your Content filter won't be monetized with video ads, since YouTube can't be sure of the copyright status and advertisers want some control over what material their ads are associated with. Most of all, and users don't want ads showing in the clip of Junior's soccer game that they send to Grandma.

There's nothing to prevent text ads or DoubleClick banners from appearing on the page, though, even for the "long tail" clips that don't support embedded video ads.

On the other hand, will there be a straightforward way for "Mom and Pop" to become "Premium" providers, so that if they want to monetize certain content, they can? Will they be given Claim Your Content accounts? I assume that it will be an extension of existing Adsense and Google Checkout accounts

I mean, copyright infringement hurts individuals and small companies MUCH MORE than it has ever hurt any of the big media corporations.

And what about fair use clips and artistic appropriation? If it's legal fair use, why should an ad be placed? Note that I mean actual artistic appropriation – parodies and such – not thefts or ripoffs. What about countries that grant wide fair use privileges to their people?

When will existing Adsense customers be allowed to get into this Adsense for video? When will advertisers be allowed to submit videos? When will my pizza get to my office?

So ... "Claim Your Content" is really all about "Claim Your Ad Revenue".

Colin C.:

It will affect them in the sense that they will have to see the ads.

You tube, we cash in.

What a horribly messy problem. I predict the margins will be tight for all involved.

Wouldn't it be funny if Google Video Search, with Adsense video ads on the side ends up being the big money maker?

'Claim Your Content' = 'Claim Your Ad Revenue'

Eric Schmidt hinted that this was indeed the case – that Google's 'partners' would have access to this technology, but it sounded like Google wouldn't try to get into the business of actively filtering content from non-partners.

My guess is that 'Claim Your Content' isn't about filtering content at all, but it's about enabling ads on copyrighted material.

I think the reason Google hasn't put ads on user-generated content so far is that they can't be found to be profiting directly from unlicensed material. Some of this stuff may never be ad-worthy.

One way to do it, for instance, would be to have “a very quick little intro preceding a video, then the video, then a commercial execution on the backside of the content,” as YouTube’s Suzie Reider says.

That's what Superdeluxe.com does. Sometimes. Kind of.

If it was at the end, that would be reasonable. If they wanted to ensure people saw it, they could add it to the overall length of the movie (because I stop watching a movie when the time is up, not when there is no longer motion on the screen).

We have been delivering thousands of videos in frames that contain the adsense code. The CTR has been not that good, but for image and branding campaigns the ad space below the stream is excellent as it shows as long as the video runs.

We also just started with embedding Youtube versions of our videos and it will be interesting to see, if they will receive more request than the real video versions.

Smart advertising would mean showing a "related ad clip" at the end of the video. web62dotcom

Apart from Youtube one has to look at brightcove.com where ad revenue sharing has been offered since a while. Sad, that their much to slow flash based uploading concept is not working well.