Blogging

So maybe YouTube’s business model won’t be so dependent on advertising after all. In a post on the official Google blog entitled “I Clicked To Buy, And I Liked It” (a nod to singer Katy Perry), the company detailed a new “E-Commerce Platform” strategy that encourages the purchase of music, video, and games on the video-sharing site.

The first step in the roll-out of the E-Commerce Platform is now live for YouTube users in the U.S. It’s a simple affiliate partnership with Amazon MP3 and Apple’s iTunes Store, much like the ones that streaming-music sites like iLike and MySpace Music already have in place: YouTube will be adding purchase links to the digital music retailers for music videos that were uploaded by participating record labels (right now it appears to be limited to EMI Group). This also extends to the Amazon download of the Electronic Arts game Spore, with more game downloads coming down the road.

Over the next few months, YouTube’s E-Commerce Platform will not only expand beyond the U.S., but it will also add more partnerships in the fields of television, film, publishing (e-books, perhaps?) and beyond.

“Our vision is to help partners across all industries–from music, to film, to print, to TV–offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos,” the post on the Google blog explained.

Affiliate partnerships give Google an additional source of revenue for YouTube, which it acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006. Until this point, YouTube had generated revenue strictly through advertising–and it hasn’t exactly been a smash hit. Now, of course, the question is just how much affiliate sales can pull in as an alternate revenue stream.

The news comes on the heels of Google’s announcement that it would be venturing into in-game advertising.

See the original post here:
Google introduces YouTube click-to-buy

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 9:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.