Google offers agencies incentives to place ads on YouTube

by Fiona Ramsay, Marketing 31-Oct-08, 14:11

LONDON - Google is planning to drive advertising on its YouTube online video platform with a new agency incentive programme to launch in January, following the end of the Best Practice Funding (BPF) commissions for search campaigns.

The company is currently going to agencies with plans to drive online video growth through incentives and funding for research.

The move comes as major online players attempt to find effective ways to monetise online video content.

Jonathan Gillespie, Google's head of media solutions, told Marketing: 'Now is the next stage for us. We envisage online video as the next stage of our evolution and now is the time to take it seriously.'

The business said it was 'looking to build advertising in YouTube but in a way that it is a good experience for the user'.

It is taking a 'three-fold' approach to its development, with research projects, campaign activity and financial incentives.

Google said financial incentives for growing advertising campaigns on YouTube were 'not BPF'. Gillespie said: 'BPF was put in place to drive search and it has come to an end as it has done its job. This is a different scheme but it is a package of measures which are about growing online video with agencies.'

Google said the financial terms of the new incentives were confidential.

The company is taking an 'increasingly collaborative approach with agencies' and aimed to increase the understanding of how users consume video and interact with online video advertising by investing in joint research projects with agencies to help the industry better understand how consumer behaviour in online video is changing. It aims to learn how online video works with TV, and how users engage with online video. Gillespie said: 'We expect YouTube to have a higher level engagement than other online video.'

The search giant said it would use its London-based online ad specialist Tangozebra, a division of DoubleClick, to develop creative video and display campaigns, podcasting and in-game advertising with agencies.

For a fuller analysis on the changes Google is making to its incentive payments, see the 5 November edition of Marketing magazine.