With the ever increasing traffic over Google owned video-sharing venue, YouTube mobile site, it is not surprising that the Mountain View web giant last week officially embarked on a broad rollout of advertising to its mobile YouTube site (m.youtube.com) in the US and Japan, following 18 months of testing in a bid to raise funds from the popular, but financially-floundering site.
The Google-owned video venue is not, however, precisely breaking the mold for mobile ads. After performing ad tests on the site around the summer of 2008, Google has settled on banner ads for the platform. It is displaying static banners at the top of its m.youtube.com homepage, browsing pages and search results pages.
The pre-roll ads are skippable, but that does not mean they are not annoying. The new mobile ads seem unobtrusive enough as shown above in the screenshot, but on the small screen they do actually take up a fair chunk of your screen.
“This is an wonder-working way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms,” Taylor Cascino, Strategic Partner Development Manager at YouTube said in a blog post.
“In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web.”
These will be sold on a full-day basis, and is being initially rolled out to American and Japanese YouTube mobile websites, that is -- m.youtube.com on your mobile phone's browser.
YouTube will not display ads inside videos being played on phones. Ads also would not become visible on the YouTube applications for iPhone and Android handsets.
In a surprising turn of events, YouTube is selling the ads on a flat fee per day rather than on a CPM basis. Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube's director of monetization, compared the placement to YouTube's front-page ad that is also sold for a daily fee.
“We think it will cater to one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile Web,” he said.
In terms of monetization, YouTube is targeting a platform that is becoming more popular than ever, YouTube touts that “tens of millions” of videos are played each day from its mobile site and that traffic has grown 160% in 2009. Campaigns since it began experiment on YouTube mobile ads have included efforts by L'Oreal, Kia and Sony. Mazda is running a campaign today.
Mehrotra said the mobile ads are another step in YouTube's drive to find an ad model commensurate with the site's wide reach. He promised the ad formats would “evolve.”
“We are just getting started,” he said.
The Google-owned site has been in desperate need of extra funds for awhile now, and still remains in the red. Hence, you can just imagine how good this site traffic will be in terms of potential for more ad clicks and brand campaign awareness.
With Google desperate to turn the fortunes of YouTube around though, it will only be a matter of time before we have to scroll just that little bit more to see a Simpsons clip. If you are a brand campaign manager, you ought to know that those banner ad spots are sold on a full-day basis. You can extend your ad campaign run from the YouTube website to the mobile site. To know how you can go about this, visit this site.
Google has targeted mobile as its next big ads market. It has accomplished that objective on several fronts, including building its own operating system, rolling out the NexusOne phone and inking a deal to pay $750 million for mobile ad network AdMob.
Mehrotra stated that the ad quality would become better with the passing of time as handsets and operating systems both get more sophisticated. “This is starting with what the browsers can support at broad reach,” he said.
Magnum first advertising 3D spot on Youtube Mobile
"Use a TOYin3D to watch this video in PARALLEL-VIEW on your mobile"
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