Branded Channels was involved with these aspects:

• branded channel design
• optimization of channel banner with image map
• re-encode and placement of videos
• optimization of video metadata (Video SEO)
• advice on setting up promoted videos in combination with CTAs

Altogether, a fun project completed within four days.

Schmidt painted a long term picture between 10 and 15 years to an audience at the Royal Television Society in Cambridge: “We’re going to go all out on all of them to ensure that if you have great content, as people in your society do, then you can decide if you want it to be advertising supported or if you want people to pay a subscription”, Schmidt said. He also claimed that Google has already generated between $5 and $6 billion through its AdSense model. Schmidt: “Our goal is to make large amounts of money for our content partners.”

Unlike Bebo and MySpace who have started to commission their own content, Schmidt said Google will not go into content: “We are a technology company.”

See full report at Broadband TV News

In the article, Richard discusses why Google should enable advertisers to start building traffic from their own content on YouTube back to their own site. Currently, this is not possible. With an estimated 3-15% of views currently being monetized on YouTube, Google could easily increase this value by allowing advertisers to buy ads against their own content on YouTube.

Right now, selected videos on user channels have autoplay, while videos on brand and partner channels feature click-to-play.

How long this glitch will be live is unknown.

Update: 11:45 PM – The bug is now fixed by YouTube. All things back to normal.

According to the NewMediaAge article, commercial broadcaster ITV lost an estimated £1.3m in ad revenues because no ad deal was in place for the popular Britain’s Got Talent content. Susan Boyle’s performance generated more than 85 million video views on YouTube (more than 70 million on this video alone, for which embedding has been disabled!?).

In the regular partnership agreement, Google is responsible for ad sales and media owners get a share of the revenues (typically 50-60%). Since these media owners know their content best, they are ideally positioned to sell such positions. One can imagine that referring clients to Google for buying such inventory is not preferred.

Many media owners use YouTube to either syndicate their content (in full or in part) or use it as a video platform to host and subsequently embed content from YouTube on their own site. With syndication, YouTube may simply enlarge ad inventory: “We sell out of our video-on-demand space so this would be additional space to sell,” an ITV source was quoted on NewMediaAge. With embedded content, having control over who advertises around the content increases overall value of advertising packages, which then includes in-video or pre-roll. Moreover, it extends reach as videos are both featured on YouTube and embedded on the media site.

The missing link

For somewhat different reasons, advertisers that own and operate a brand channel on YouTube, want control over their videos as well. Driving traffic towards selected sites is what is missing in the brand channel proposition today. In my recent post with 7 tips for better business on YouTube, the number two suggested improvement is the use of YouTube as a conversion tool.

Most advertisers I talk to ask how much traffic YouTube will generate back towards their own site. Unfortunately, the only way to do this today is to include a back-link in the video description. Google requires brand channel owners to invest in media spend to drive traffic towards the brand channel and its content – on YouTube. Advertisers can use the available inventory on partner channels and other sites within the Google content network to purchase display, in-video and – in some markets – pre-roll. But once you have the attention of your audience on your own brand channel videos, you cannot instantly drive traffic back to the brand site from the video itself. Exclusive use of in-video advertising on your own content would be a desired feature. Advertisers should be enabled to use part of their required media investment to purchase such positions at Google’s ratecard prices (instead of AdWords, since there is no one to bid against).

Other than perhaps some technical and administrative hurdles, I cannot imagine why Google would not offer such features to brand channel owners. It clearly adds value to the brand channel proposition, while it also helps Google to more effectively monetize YouTube.

Agree or disagree? Please comment.

Thanks to Beet.TV.

Coldwell Banker combines the features of YouTube with the power of localisation through Google Maps by enabling visitors to find real estate locations throughout the United States. Very smart move. The production quality of the videos shown on the channel varies substantially (compare this one with this one), but the idea is great. The channel already features more than 600 videos and new content is added daily from various locations. Mainly in the USA and a few listings from Italy.

“YouTube doesn’t offer the ability to find out what videos are local, but we geo-targeted the videos and populated them onto the map,” said Mike Fischer, Coldwell’s SVP of marketing. The goal for Coldwell, recognizing the popularity of YouTube, is to generate traffic outside of its own site. “Many go to YouTube first, instead of the normal site. It’s the place to engage people where they look for info,” Fischer said.

That says it all: think outside the site!

Thanks to ClickZ.