GTO Blog

YouTube has never suffered from a lack of videos, only a lack of advertising -- at least according to stockholders who are anxiously awaiting a profit. But the video-sharing site will soon be getting a lot more of both as parent company Google unveils its latest plan to monetize its $1.65 billion acquisition.

People who search the site will now be greeted with video advertisements similar to those produced by Google AdSense. YouTube searches now produce "sponsored" videos on the right side of the screen alongside unpaid results on the left. For instance, a search for raunchy comic Lisa Lampanelli turns up two video ads: one for the James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace," and another for the "Miss Horrorfest Contest."

Like AdSense, YouTube Sponsored Videos allows advertisers to bid on search terms. The service charges on a pay-per-click basis, with advertisers allowed to set a maximum price they are willing to pay.

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Keyword targeting can sometimes feel like a guessing game. Potential customers are performing hundreds of millions of searches on Google, most of which you don't even know about. With so many searches, you have to guess which ones might be relevant for each of your landing pages, and hope you find the right audience for your AdWords campaigns. That's where the Search-based Keyword Tool (beta) comes in. With this new tool you can get a better sense of what your potential customers are searching for and which keywords you should advertise on.

http://www.google.com/sktool/#

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Recession, Regulation and Fewer Blockbusters Mean Less Ads

Big pharma might not be so recession-proof, after all.

Throughout previous economic downturns in the advertising world, the one bellwether of hope was always the pharmaceutical industry. Even as the dot-com boom went bust in the early part of this decade, and overall ad spending began to drop, direct-to-consumer (DTC) spending by drug companies continued to rise every year.

But not this time.

According to a new study by TNS Media Intelligence, DTC spending is down for the second consecutive year and likely will not reach the $5 billion mark by the end of 2008 that many media companies had counted on…..

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Watch out Hulu! Feature films are coming to YouTube possibly as early as December, according to reports. Google has been in talks with Hollywood studios for months, and it looks like at least one major company is in. The streaming movies will be ad-supported, but some wonder if the movies can be profitable without jamming too many commercials down viewers’ throats.

comScore says it has found a solution to an increasingly challenging proposition in the digital media business - how do you track the audience for content that travels all over the Internet?

The metrics firm has announced the launch of comScore Extended Web measurement, a product that promises to provide publishers and advertisers with the ability to track content across mulitiple third party sites, such as videos, social media applications, widgets and photos. At the same time, comScore’s Media Metrix service will begin offering gross rating point data for online ads—the equivalent to the traditional media world’s standard GRP metric--which should allow advertisers to better evaluate cross media campaigns.