In the battle for online advertising dollars, YouTube has been rolling out new products in recent months to grab more revenue. In its latest move, the Google-owned video site is expanding its click-to-buy program.
The feature lets visitors purchase songs and video games while watching videos on the site. Partners include Amazon and Apple’s iTunes Store. YouTube initially launched the concept in the United States and the United Kingdom, but is now moving affiliate ads to Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
“The past few months have demonstrated that great content on YouTube leads to increased sales,” YouTube said on its corporate blog. “For example, when Monty Python launched their channel in November, not only did their YouTube videos shoot to the top of the most viewed lists, but their DVDs also quickly climbed to No. 2 on Amazon’s Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.”
A Broad Platform
The expansion shouldn’t be surprising. When YouTube launched the ad model in October, Glenn Brown, YouTube’s strategic partner development manager, said it was just the beginning of building a broad e-commerce platform.
He said YouTube’s 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.”
Besides moving into three new regions, the program also removed some limits. YouTube said the program is no longer restricted to tracks on videos uploaded directly by YouTube partners. Partners can add these links to videos uploaded by users by using YouTube’s Content ID tools to claim videos that use their content.
YouTube also said it has already experimented with links to purchase DVDs and video games, and intends to experiment with links…