Wednesday, 31 January 2007

YouTube to Add Pre-Roll Video Ads

YouTube has plans to make it’s site more advertiser friendly said CEO Chad Hurley. Moving in line with this strategy the service wants to start sharing ad revenue with video creators.

Hurley also hinted that the company is moving in the direction of 'audio-fingerprinting' technology that will identify pieces of copyrighted material used in videos to compensate rights holders.

"We're going to move in that direction," Hurley said of paying users. "We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. We want to build a true community around video."

YouTube is building its path in this direction rather fast. It has already struck a deal with Coke for a handful of popular video bloggers to appear in a holiday campaign for the soft drink.

The users of YouTube have not taken the news well. Many users said, that they would visit the site less if it started including short video ads before every clip, according to the results of a recent Harris Poll released Monday. Of those, 42per cent said they would visit a little less often, and 31per cent, a lot less often.