paidContent.org - YouTube Takes Small Steps On Affiliate Ads With European Expansion

As online ad dollars become increasingly squeezed, YouTube is taking another incremental step toward getting more traction for its affiliate ad program. The Google-owned video site is extending the click-to-buy feature, which it unveiled last October, beyond the U.S. and UK. The affiliate ads offers products?mostly songs or movies?that can be bought on partner sites like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Apple's iTunes. Links to songs from the iTunes Store will now appear in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, so users from those countries who are drawn to a particular song can easily purchase it.

YouTube is claiming that the program has proven its value as a promotional tool. For example, after Monty Python launched their channel in November, the comedy troupe's DVDs went to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales 23,000 percent. (A look at the list today, however, shows that Monty Python isn't even in the top 100.) In any case, as MediaMemo's Peter Kafka notes, "these small steps won't move the needle for Google?or even YouTube, for that matter." But as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has learned, there is no silver bullet when it comes to realizing ad revenue from YouTube?something it conceded when it began moving away from mainly promoting overlays by augmenting its offerings with more post-rolls and pre-rolls last October.

Robert adds: We reported in November that YouTube was bringing Click-To-Buy to Europe, but one interesting point we're still waiting on: who will be the retail partner/s? Now that Amazon MP3 has rolled out in the UK (with other territories to follow), a continuation seems likely, and iTunes is rather ubiquitous; another contender is DRM-free retailer 7Digital. But Google partnerships VP David Eun, at this week's MidemNet music conference, refused to speculate as to who would be picked.

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