YouTube partnered with Vevo to make music videos from U2, Lady Gaga and others available free via the YouTube 2.0 for Android app. YouTube is showing pre-roll ads on these clips.
YouTube Jan.
12 is making Vevo's online video library accessible via the YouTube 2.0 application
for Android.
YouTube fans, who
own smartphones based on Android 2.2 and later versions, can access Vevo's
videos, including content by Lady Gaga and U2, for free.
Don't think
YouTube and its Google parent aren't making money from the content.
The Website is
inserting pre-roll ads into "tens of thousands of YouTube partner
videos" served on the YouTube 2.0 application for Android. YouTube Mobile
Product Manager Andrey Doronichev called the move "our largest step to
mobile monetization to date."
"This not
only expands distribution opportunities for partners like Vevo, but also opens
up more revenue to partners distributing their content to mobile,"
Doronichev explained.
"As the
world goes mobile and more people watch videos on their smartphones, we expect
more partners will take advantage of these new mobile advertising capabilities
and make more of their content available across more devices."
If Vevo
realizes major returns on its investment from the pre-roll ads, you can indeed
expect existing and new YouTube partners to get on board.
While the Vevo
offering is available from the YouTube Android application for now, Doronichev
promised to expand these offerings to let partners run pre-roll ads across
mobile platforms.
IDC said Google commanded 60 percent of the mobile ad
market through 2010. The bulk of that lies in search ads. In mobile display
ads, where YouTube mobile ads are bucketed, Google is tied with Apple's iOS
platform.
YouTube now
exceeds 200 million views a day from mobile devices, or three times that of
previous years. With this offering, and the fact that Google's display and
mobile ads are operating at a $2.5 billion run-rate, Google is
well positioned for 2011.
To spur
adoption of its Vevo content offering, YouTube is denoting music videos with a
music note badge, enabling users to read artist bios while watching via their
smartphones, and providing tabs for additional artist tracks and related artists.
The new
YouTube 2.0 Android application comes preinstalled on Android 2.3-based devices
such as the Samsung Nexus S. Users of Android 2.2 smartphones such as the
Motorola Droid X and HTC Evo 4G can install it manually from the Android Market.
Email
Print
