YouTube are going to add ads, but You won’t make profit

Google spent a great deal of money on YouTube.com and now decided that showing one single ads banner at the top on the site itself is not enough, since most videos are viewed off-site anyway. So… YouTube is rolling out a new video unit with Google ads embedded into them. Publishers who run the unit will get a share of the income generated. Sounds great? Not really.

Publishers will display videos, however, they will not be able to earn money showing their own videos in the player. As far as I understood, just like any Google ads, YouTube’s “in-built” ads are going to be targeted to website’s content, otherwise you choose the categories.

Will the small publisher make money? Well, considering you now have to work extra hard to make GOOD videos that will get widely distributed, so that other’s will display it on their sites, play AND click — in my opinion, this is definitely not the best way to get your Adsense earnings rolling, but who knows…

What I don’t like about this edition is that YouTube’s video window will grow bigger (having the banner add-on on top) and consequently won’t look that sleek anymore, since you will have more ads with any video you display. However, having spent $1.65 billion dollars on YouTube’s take over, it’s about time they start brining some income back, considering that Matt Cutts probably won’t allow PR8 link sales on the front page.