YouTube Takes Small Steps On Affiliate Ads With European Expansion
This story was written by David Kaplan.
YouTube is taking another incremental step toward getting more traction for its affiliate ad program, as online ad dollars become increasingly squeezed. The Google-owned video site unveiled click-to-buy feature last October. The affiliate ads offers productsmostly songs or moviesthat can be bought on partner sites like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Apple's iTunes. The Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) arrangement is being extended beyond the U.S. and the UK. Links to songs from the iTunes Store will now appear in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, so users from those countries who are drawn to a particular song can easily purchase it.
YouTube is claiming that that the program has proven its value as a promotional tool. For example, after Monty Python launched their channel in November, the comedy troupe's DVDs went to to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent. (A look at the list today, however, shows that Monty Python isn't even in the top 100.) In any case, as MediaMemo's Peter Kafka notes, "these small steps won't move the needle for Googleor even YouTube, for that matter." But as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has learned, there is no silver bullet when it comes to realizing ad revenue from YouTubesomething it conceded when it began moving away from mainly promoting overlays by augmenting its offerings with more post-rolls and pre-rolls last October.
By David Kaplan