While the traditional YouTube site hasn’t exactly reached monster status in its advertising rakes, Google seems to think it’s about time to dip their toes into the water in the mobile advertising realm for its wildly popular online video site. On Monday, Google began testing display ads on the YouTube mobile site.
While these ads have been shown to a very limited number of users, it’s the beginning of the fulfillment of everyone’s expectations. Has Google mastered its advertising efforts on the non-mobile YouTube site? Nope. Has it found the optimal mobile experience for its YouTube users? Nope. But there’s hardly any harm or fault for the company to try to leverage their advertising muscle to see what it can flex out of its mobile efforts early on in the game. With such a huge future for all things mobile, especially multimedia channels, the driving reasons behind Google’s desires to establish itself in the mobile advertising arena are clear.
Throw Android (and the recently FCC-approved HTC Dream) into the mix and it’s easy to see where things are headed.
The Official Google Mobile Blog notes that the testing will only last a few weeks, “ to make sure we provide our community, our partners and advertisers with the most valuable and effective mobile experience possible.”
The benefits are obviously there for Google. The benefits for the everyday YouTube mobile user, however, are less clear at the moment. Ads are mildly appealing at best (even that’s a generous statement) on a PC-based site, and even less so on a mobile device. While it’s highly unlikely that ads on YouTube’s mobile pages will deter users from visiting the site and watching videos on their mobile devices, there’s no doubt that consumer satisfaction with the site will take a slight hit.
Google seems to be aware of this, which explains why it is sneaking into the room to test some ads out, promising from the outset that it will only last several weeks.
Sources:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/08/18/ads-hit-youtubes-mobile-site
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/08/google_begins_t.html
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/08/this-is-test-ads-on-youtubes-mobile.html
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/08/fcc_approval_ad.html
Jason Hahn
e: jhahn221@gmail.com
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