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Google has formally announced that it will begin trying ads on select YouTube videos. The way this will work, according to the announcement, is by having a short ad rise up from the bottom 20% of the video. The ad will have an X for you to close it out if you wish, and if not it will go away after it has played.

If you click on the ad, it will pause the video playing and play another short video in the middle of your video player. Once it has finished (or before if you don’t like what you see) you go back to your video. Clicking onto the ad video will also launch a new destination page for the advertiser, if you so choose. See some screen shots from the Linkin Park video below for an example:

 

On Click:

 

 

You can also see another example HERE - this one sheds a little more light on the relevancy factor, illustrating when these ads will actually show up. Of course with audio-to-text still not very good, relevancy will continue to be a question.

There are, of course, many people not too excited and a quick look at the comments on the blog post indicate that Youtube users are not really looking forward to this at all. But it will probably be a little longer before we see truly how everyone feels. The ads will only show up on YouTube content partners’ content for now (approximately 1,000 partners or so) and I’m sure won’t be rolled out entirely at once. But once users start to see them more, we’ll certainly see things showing up in the blogosphere about it.

I think it’s a step in the right direction. Others have been trying it - VideoEgg, for example, has tried something similar, as some have noted. However in YouTube this will certainly be the big stage for this all to play out on. In the Linkin Park example above, for instance, as the video is letterboxed the ad doesn’t actually interfere with any of the video’s content at all. Even in the Hairspray example, I’m really not bothered. And as someone who generally despises the approach of traditional advertising, I think that’s pretty impressive.

It’s understandable that your average YouTube user will not be too appreciative of the overall situation. While it is the truth, many folks probably won’t be thinking about the fact that Google put $1.6 billion dollars of investment into something that wasn’t making money and needs to find a way to change that. In fact, even though it is the almighty Google and they have a decent amount of cash to spare, if they cannot find acceptable ways to monetize YouTube it might not be long for this world. So while people may complain for now, I think “YouTube with ads” will be better for most than “no YouTube at all.” And this isn’t just for YouTube, it’s for all video sharing sites. There’s an awful lot of bandwidth being used up and someone has to pay for it.

Something has to be done in this space, so here we go. For me, the biggest questions will revolve around revenue sharing, copyright issues around ads and relevancy. I’m excited, should be interesting…

In case you missed it, Google officially ended its DTO/DTR (download to own, download to rent) video service last week. Google let folks who had previously purchased a video know (like me!) that:

…we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007…After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $2.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days.

As you may have guessed, many people weren’t too happy with the way this originally went down. People who had purchased videos now had about a week to watch them before their purchases were rendered useless. The consolation? A $2.00 Google Checkout bonus.

Not too long after this announcement - about a few thousand letters and blog postings later - Google admitted that they made a mistake. On their official blog they wrote:

When your friends and well-intentioned acquaintances tell you that you’ve made a mistake, it’s good to listen…we thought offering the refund in the form of Google Checkout credits would entail fewer steps and offer a better user experience. We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad.

Among the changes they are making, Google will now offer a full refund to anyone who purchased a video, will allow users to continue to watch their videos for another 6 months and will also allow you to keep the $2.00 Google Checkout credit you’ve received.

This will no doubt make people much happier, and I believe, as I’m sure many others do, that it’s always good to see a company admitting they made a mistake and fixing it.

One thing that this does entire story does make you think about (which I thought PC Mag’s article captured quite well) is how this kind of thing really could happen. Google is a giant and therefore decided that based on the negative feedback it was getting they would remedy the situation - so more time to see your movies, a full refund and an additional credit for you. But what if this wasn’t Google? What if a video company or picture uploading site or blogging service that you had invested your time, uploads, content or writing to just went under? If they didn’t have the power of Google to give more back, where would you be?

All that said, I firmly believe that this is the nature of the evolving digital marketplace. It’s happened with other industries, that’s just the way it goes. In order to make things happen you have to try new things out. Way back when Google decided to roll out its own video service along with this DTR/DTO functionality, nobody had a clue on how to monetize video online. Surprise surprise, no one has really figured it out now either. So while there might be some repercussions that come along with this type of experimentation, there are still benefits that come from it. Now in this particular example the negatives are exacerbated because of the fact that users’ money is involved, but think of all of the benefits that come from companies like Google experimenting (and often failing) in the online sphere and developing (mostly) free products for folks to use. I think dealing with some failure is a byproduct that, in the end, most people are ok dealing with. The above blog entry from Google actually ends with a similar thought.

We make mistakes; we do our best not to repeat them — and we really do try to fix the ones we make. That said, the very least that our users should expect from us is that our mistakes be new and innovative, too.

Sure, there is a certain degree of spin on everything. But putting it all into perspective, I think these are things that we as users of the magical interwebonlineportalspace should not only expect, but embrace.

Now for some changes to the Google Video service as a whole…

A Google lawyer announced on Friday that they will apply video fingerprinting technology to YouTube by September.

This comes as great news to countless of video content producers, that are now seeing their copyright videos on YouTube without their permission.

The video screening technology will consist of a computer system which will automatically scan all videos uploaded to YouTube and compare them to a collection of digital fingerprints built by Google. According, to Google the process will only take a few minutes to scan and determine its acceptance onto YouTube.

This is definitely a large step forward for YouTube and one that will hopefully help to spend less time in the courtroom and more time revolutionizing the Internet.

So we’re only about a week away from Apple rolling out its iPhone everywhere (if, by “everywhere,” you mean only from AT&T stores) and today a nifty announcement that the phone will come equipped with a pre-loaded player to showcase YouTube videos. It won’t be complete access to all videos within YouTube, but a selected group of around 10,000 clips that have been designed to be “battery-preserving.” See Forbes’ article HERE (one of many from 6/20) -

This announcement got me thinking, as many other people of course are, about the rest of what I perceive to be the iPhone’s shortcomings. Not that I don’t think the iPhone will come with many cool features and will certainly do a lot to advance every aspect of portable media… I think it will. But at this moment there are a few things that I see as major issues with the new device. For now I’ll just highlight what is clearly the most glaring - memory.

Your new iPhone can be in either a 4 GB or 8 GB form. For a phone, that’s a lot. But this isn’t supposed to be just a phone. No one would be too excited about Apple coming out with a $599 phone, no matter how cool it looked. This device is supposed to really start to bridge the gap between portable media devices. No more iPod in your left pocket, phone in your right and blackberry in your hand. Internet access via the network, wi-fi compatibility, iTunes synchability, a large video display…these are designed to bring your devices into one. So then the $599 doesn’t sound so bad considering how much all of those other three devices cost.

But 8 GB at the most? I venture to guess that many people have at least half that in mp3s that they’ve downloaded from iTunes. Many more have spent the last few years converting their entire music collection to digital on their 30 or 60 GB iPods. Those hardcore users will not be able to combine devices. They’ll still need to carry their iPods around for a while.

Then we’ve got the movies and video clips…”Cool,” you say. A screen that knows when it’s flipped sideways and turns to widescreen. Yes, it is cool. You could actually watch a full length movie on there and not need a telescope. But how much space does a movie take up? About 750 MB to 1.25 GB on average. That’s about 8 or 9 movies if that’s all you have on your iPhone. If you have some of those songs you’ve spent years converting, you’re talking about room for maybe 2-3.

Of course, the new screen is also perfect for keeping all of your digital pictures and showing them off on the fly. You can even make slide shows set to music. But add 3-4 vacations’ worth of images at a resolution that you’ve taken them at and you’re quickly over 1 GB (which many people have on their camera currently).

Bottom line, there isn’t enough space. And this, of course, is talking about the $599 8 GB model. I’d bet that most people are going to be more fascinated with the design and less interested in consolidating devices and therefore will go with the $499 4 GB model. They will quickly realize that once the phone novelty has worn off, the issues with practicality will be a bit of a kick in the pants.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I think the iPhone will do wonders for portable devices, much like the iPod did. It will certainly help media folks from all walks of life make lots of money (AT&T and Apple in particular). I look forward to writing more about this in the future. But this one issue just seems way off for me and I just can’t get around it. For me, this is reason enough to not invest the half a thousand in a new iPhone.

….but wait…I wonder if the 30 GB iPhone will be ready by next Christmas?