(Mirror Daily, United States) – Remember when YouTube’s selling point was cat videos? What a passive activity. According to the Google-owned platform, you’ll soon be able to not only watch those videos, but also buy whatever you see in them, such as kitty litter.
Online shopping has become even more hassle-free. As the online video site looks for ways to become more of a revenue source, it has come up with a new option to ease your online purchases. Not only do you not have to go to the actual shop to buy, but you don’t even have to leave YouTube in order to do so.
Google will be the one to decide video and ads pairing and the one to serve the ads, which can appear on any video. Users can rest assured as the new ads are said to be relatively unobtrusive; all that’s added is a small box in the top right corner that users can click on. In doing so, they will activate a drop down menu of products that appear as the video plays.
Advertising is definitely bringing a lot of money into YouTube’s pockets, but not enough, so the platform is now looking for other ways it can make revenue off its videos. The subscription service scheduled to launch later this year is still under development.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s report back in February, YouTube’s $4 billion profit only managed to break even in 2014. Still maintaining its number one spot in the online video field, YouTube is having trouble turning a profit.
And e-commerce might just be the right answer, with the U.S. Commerce Department revealing that U.S. Internet commerce reached $300 billion for the first time in 2014. And with Google’s video platform turning into a destination for users to find and learn about products, turning to e-commerce might do wonders.
Over 1 million channels are dedicated to tutorials and product reviews, according to Diya Jolly, director of ads at YouTube, and the views on these particular videos prove that people are flocking on these kinds of videos.
Retailers will go through a similar process to Google’s regular shopping ads, which means they will be participating in auctions for them. What’s more is that YouTube’s current system of splitting revenues off the sales with video creators will still be in place.
Ads will start rolling at the end of the week to a smaller audience for testing, but other users should expect to encounter them through the first half of 2016.
Image Source: Reelseo
Joe Hennessey
