YouTube to Expand Video Profit Sharing Program

Google subsidiary YouTube, under pressure from investors to leverage the site's popularity for greater financial profit, announces an expansion of its YouTube Partnership Program (YPP).

The popular video-sharing Website YouTube, owned by Google, announced an expansion of the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP), first launched in December 2007. While the partnership had previously focused on prolific users who regularly produce videos that reach a wide audience, the expansion of the program will now include individual "one-off" videos from individual users on the site, in an effort to "spread the wealth," according to a blog post by the company's product manager Shenaz Zack.

"Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it," he wrote. "To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video's virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service."

Zack wrote if a user's video is eligible for monetization, the user will receive an e-mail and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to the video on the watch page, as well as in other places in the user's account. "Once you've chosen to enable revenue sharing, YouTube will sell advertising against your video and pay you a revenue share into your Google AdSense account each month," he explained, noting if a user doesn't have an AdSense account, he or she would have the opportunity to create one. "Individual video partnerships will not be eligible for many of the benefits of user partnerships, like enhanced channel features or the ability to monetize other videos in your account, so we encourage you to apply to be a member of the YPP."

YouTube will now consider an individual's video partnerships when reviewing the YPP application. Zach noted that for now, individual video partnerships are available only in the United States, but he said the company hopes to roll these out internationally soon. "It's taken us some time to build out the YouTube Partnership Program, our content management tools and other infrastructure to handle expanding the YPP to so many individual users and videos," he concluded. "Now that we're ready to share these opportunities with a wider audience, we're excited to see how individual video partnerships will help even more people make money from their success on YouTube."

In an effort to further expand the popularity and accessibility of Google's AdSense ad serving application, the company also announced that in addition to allowing users to follow developments on the program's blog, Twitter, the AdSense Help Center and the AdSense Help Forum, a Facebook Fan Page has also been set up to house optimization photos and videos that are currently found on the program's YouTube channel.