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Making online video ad up - July 9, 2008

YouTube will begin accepting pre-roll and post-roll ads on videos, the Wall Street Journal, reports this morning, citing "one person familiar with the matter." This despite the fact that YouTube itself acknowledges that consumers don't like them. Advertisers, the Journal notes, "find them highly effective." Call it a case of see no evil, hear no evil, even as you try to hold to your commitment not to do evil. Times are tough, after all. Nearly two years after Google paid more than $1.7 billion to acquire YouTube, revenue at the video-sharing site is only about $200 million, according to the Journal. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt has admitted, "it's taken longer than I thought for us to find the right combinations," of ad formats to monetize YouTube.

The Journal piece, a throwback to the days when the great newspaper regularly ran long, comprehensive profiles, is well worth reading in full.

Meanwhile. Google's senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath is up on Capitol Hill this morning facing questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, which is looking into the privacy implications of online advertising in general. Although Google supports comprehensive federal privacy legislation, and has not been a particular target of regulators or critics of online behavioral ad-targeting, the heightened scrutiny of online advertising in general by the government isn't likely to make advertisers any more eager to take chances online.

More on the Senate hearing later.


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