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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.