Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner Inc., said the ad initiative might provide YouTube revenue, but it failed to address the challenge shared by most sites that traffic in so-called viral video: how to make money on the most popular and polished amateur video it receives.
"This gets them money in the short term," Weiner said. "It doesn't solve the bigger issue, which is monetizing consumer-created content. They're not doing that. And they're in the same boat as everybody else. It's trying to come up with mechanisms that can put the content into various buckets so that the good stuff can be parsed out and monetized."
Another advertising initiative called Participatory Video Ad lets viewers treat advertising like any other video on YouTube -- rating it, sharing it, embedding it or commenting on it. The first such ad was for "Pulse," a horror film distributed by Weinstein Co.'s Dimension Films.
Ad agency Deep Focus has placed movie trailers on YouTube and had released the first eight minutes of one film, "Lucky Number Slevin."
But Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer thought there had to be another way to tap into YouTube's audience.
So he struck a deal to advertise on YouTube's home page. For five days around the Aug. 11 release of "Pulse," Deep Focus offered the film trailer and exclusive clips from the movie.
Schafer said the approach was far more effective than simply running a 15-second commercial before a video clip.
"Audiences opted in to watch the trailer, they opted in to comment on the trailer and they shared the trailer with their friends," he said.
"For advertisers that are looking to promote their content, this is an extremely effective way to get the word out."
Julie Supan, YouTube's senior marketing director, said viewers didn't seem to mind the intrusion of commercials into a community that thrives on quirky, funny original videos. The film trailer was viewed more than 1 million times.
"It just speaks of ads online these days as the best way to engage people through these viral campaigns," Supan said.
"Great ads are in essence great content. We're kind of blurring the lines."
Supan said YouTube unveiled its new ad program in meetings last week with major ad agencies and ad buyers in New York.
"The advertisers recognize that when the Internet was created, they needed to find a new way to advertise online. That's why banner ads were created," she said. "Now they've recognized this is a whole new environment."
