Google is really trying to find ways of making YouTube viable and sustainable. For quite some time now, YouTube has failed to bring in some considerable revenues to Google despite its popularity and high-traffic. Recently, YouTube has rolled out a Click-to-Buy service which enables users to purchase soundtracks and music featured on vides that they watch on YouTube. Before this, YouTube has also introduced a wide-screen video watching options. These two are just prelude to a bigger feature which YouTube rolled out just now – full length video streaming of CBS video content.
If you’re familiar with YouTube rival HULU, which has been aggressively pushing Internet TV, you may think of this YouTube feature as something to that effect and it looks like YouTube is trying to catch up with Hulu.com.
For YouTube’s full-length video streaming content, it is offering some old and new shows such as MacGyver, Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210. For new shows, it is also streaming season premier episodes of Dexter and Californication as well as new episodes of the show The Young and the Restless.
But wait, if you think that YouTube has nothing to gain from this, well we might be all wrong. Those full-length video contents will be supported by pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads coming from CBS ad inventory. For every revenue that CBS gain from those ADS, YouTube gets a part of it.
Whether this YouTube monetization scheme would prove successful to Google remains uncertain. But if it does pull some positive feedback from online users, then finally Google can rest easy knowing that their investment on YouTube which has been dominating the online video market, is finally bringing them some good ROI.
The full-length videos can be seen by selected regional areas covered of course by the CBS network. Unfortunately, Asian countries will not have access to these videos. Google might want to rethink about this restrictions as these might cause non-US users to look for unrestricted sources which are also residing on YouTube content.
