Google’s YouTube acquisition is looking less and less like a financial boondoggle every day.
YouTube is now selling ads against 9% of its content, versus 6% a year ago (and remember, this is a market in serious recession). According to AdAge:
“A YouTube spokesman confirmed that the social site is placing ads on more videos than Fox Interactive Media, parent of MySpace and IGN Entertainment. Fox Interactive ranks No. 2 by ComScore’s measure, with 463 million views in February, or about 8.7% of YouTube’s 5.3 billion views in the U.S.“
It also seems like the commercial content producers that were so up in arms about YouTube’s “theft” of their copyrighted works are not only backing down, but stepping up. The latest word is that Sony is going to experiment uploading full-length feature films to YouTube.
And while Sumner Redstone is still suing YouTube for copyright infringement, many of his companies, including CBS and Showtime, are posting content to YouTube. It would be fun to watch Viacom’s lawyers explain to a judge how it can load content on the one hand and sue for infringement on the other.
But we’ll never get that chance because the suit will never come to trial. It’s game over, and Google has once again shown up the pundits who thought they knew better than them.