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Industry Trends

YouTube Wooing Big Media Companies

By January 27, 2009July 30th, 2023One Comment

In what could be a win-win situation for all concerned, Google is planning to allow big media companies to start selling ads along with their content that appears on YouTube.

For a long time now, YouTube has been engaged in a tussle of sorts with big media companies. These companies feel that YouTube’s policy of allowing users to upload content produced by the media houses is a violation of copyright laws.

Given the fact that YouTube is the most popular online video site, media owners are better off being on YouTube’s side rather than getting into a legal battle with them. However, some companies like Viacom have sued YouTube in the past.

TechCrunch reports that a new proposal from YouTube will allow these content providers to sell ads on YouTube, alongside their own videos. Content owners will obviously be given a share of the revenue thus earned, which should please them and may even induce them to change loyalties from other sites such as Hulu and TV.com, which they currently patronise.

According to Ars Technica, a few companies such as CBS already have such a deal with the Google subsidiary, but it could now be expanded to include others.

YouTube will gain from this arrangement as they will be able to better monetise their content and earn higher revenues than they have been able to do so far. It will also increase their share of media content received from big media partners, which is only 4% at present.

Last but not the least, users who upload various videos including content from larger media companies on YouTube will no longer have to worry about the videos being removed for fear of copyright violations.

It is expected that this service will be launched by the end of the first quarter of 2009.