After attracting millions of eyeballs with video clips of dancing cats and lip-syncing coeds, YouTube hopes to cash in on its popularity with online infomercials.
Starting today, the video-sharing site plans to let advertisers create "channels" filled with clips they produce themselves -- and then in turn sell sponsorships to other advertisers.
Among the first: a channel created by Warner Bros. Records devoted to Paris Hilton's new album, including the making of the music video for the song "Stars Are Blind." Fox Broadcasting Co. will advertise on the Paris Hilton Channel to promote the fall season of the television show "Prison Break."
Placing ads within ads further blurs the traditional lines between entertainment and its sponsors, a trend the Web is accelerating.
It also defies the conventional wisdom that the young viewers who while away afternoons on sites like YouTube and MySpace don't want to be the targets of corporate marketing campaigns. Advertiser-produced clips frequently rank among YouTube's most popular, particularly those with exclusive tidbits about popular shows or bands.
"These days, consumers are like walking TiVos, filtering out so much of what they see and hear in advertising," said Mark Kingdon, chief executive of digital ad agency Organic Inc., which produced the "Prison Break" spots. "To reach this media-savvy demographic, advertisers have to 'give to get.' In other words, they have to give viewers something special, something unique, in exchange for their attention."
Despite YouTube Inc.'s status as an emblem of online media, it's never been easy for the San Mateo, Calif., company to claim much of the $17-billion online advertising market. Advertisers are reluctant to have their messages spliced together with clips that might be tasteless or violate copyrights.
YouTube attracts about 20 million viewers a month with a hypnotic mash of amateur video and snippets of big-budget movies and television shows -- many of them copied without permission. Giving advertisers their own domains with YouTube solves that problem.
"This is a way for advertisers and brands to participate in our community, to allow them more ability to customize the look and feel for the channel, to build an audience through subscription and allow user interaction with the content they created," said Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of privately held YouTube, which started in 2005 as a way for friends to share home videos.
