YouTube: New Look, Old Content
In its most recent bid to make YouTube more attractive to advertisers, Google is introducing new sections to the online video site that will be reserved for TV shows, movies, and other professional content. The general design of YouTube will remain, as will the guitar-playing teens, break-dancing babies, and other homemade movies that make up the bulk of the site. Yet the cleanly organized menus and sleek video player of YouTube’s new pages look to be Google’s response to the success of Hulu, the startup video site jointly owned by News Corp. and NBC Universal.
In a phone briefing with journalists on Apr. 16, the company also announced a new advertising product called Google TV Ads, which will allow marketers to run television-like spots before, during or after certain videos, as well as enhanced tools for tracking the performance of those ads. Google TV Ads are designed for the newly added professional content, and won’t run in conjunction with clips produced by amateurs.
