Google Exec: Promote First, Monetize Later

Lucrative promotional opportunities that can evolve to profitable ventures await those that harness the power of YouTube’s user-generated content site, according to Google Content Partnerships Vice President David Uen.

Saying the site’s content went from non existent two years ago to well over 10 million views a day, Uen’s main message during a keynote talk at NAB 2007 was that Google connects users, advertisers and content. It’s a statement reinforced by the Web giant’s plans to acquire DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion.

“When our partners do well, we do well,” Uen said. “In the fourth quarter of 2006 alone, we paid out $1 billion to our partners,” he added, in reference to the YouTube model in which the company splits revenue 50-50 with content owners.

“We think YouTube is a testing ground for content owners, and we’d love to work with you as partnerships are key,” Uen stressed to the audience, the lion’s share of which are executives at broadcasting companies worldwide. “We think the glass if half full and look forward to the future.”

In the wake of a recent lawsuit by Viacom alleging YouTube posted its content without authorization, Uen spent a sizable chunk of his presentation emphasizing that the company takes, and is continuing to take, big steps to address the situation. He tackled copyright issues head-on and even suggested turning what content owners see as negatives into positive business opportunities.

“We respect copyright. We do believe though that a lot of what is going on is defensive and legalistic in nature,” admitted Uen. “We’re trying to apply better technology to the issue and have put our best engineers on it.”

Uen, a former NBC and Time Warner executive, said Google lets visitors flag objectionable content such as porn, has created an automated tool to let advertisers take down their materials and lets content owners decide if they want their video assets indexed or not.

Speaking as a Google exec, Uen said the firm’s goal is to help users find video anywhere it exists and does not, and will not, give preferential treatment to such content if its comes from its YouTube site. “The focus for YouTube is providing a platform for users to connect with video and each other.”

That assertion provides what he believes is a giant value to content owners looking to promote their assets, especially on Internet video Web sites, which seems to characterize the Google-YouTube combo. But they are “focusing on parallel, complimentary paths,” as one that helps users find and promote video content on the Web, he said.

Uen also spent a substantial amount of time stressing that YouTube is “more than just a destination of watch pages, but a means of traffic generation for our partners.”

“We’re not perfect yet,” he added, “but we continue to work with our partners and they like the promotion exposure they’ve gotten so far.”

Perhaps the greatest challenge YouTube faces is selling wary content owners on business opportunities that start with promotion of their assets, but may not be initially monetizable. Saying the company’s in the experimentation-to-monetization phase, Uen admitted the firm is still “trying to find the right balance between content and ads.”

He summed up the goal: “We’re working to improve the user experience and provide content providers with promotional power [with] monetization later on.”

Google www.google.com  

YouTube www.youtube.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines