Forget those YouTubevertorials. Google is no longer joking around when it comes to turning YouTube into real business that, you know, makes money. YouTube on its own would rank as the second largest search engine after Google. And you know what? Google has already figured out how to make money from search. You sell the top results to the highest bidder.
YouTube has long resisted selling search results, but it has now caved in. Now anyone can promote their YouTube videos for specific search keywords on a pay-per-click basis. This should generate substantial new revenues for Google. YouTube has a lot of search inventory. (Viewers search on the site more than 2.5 billion times per month). This should also generate a lot more spam results.
Google likes to pretend that paid search ads can be just as relevant as organic search results. And in the text world that is sometimes true. But when it comes to video, the sex factor gets magnified, and what you end up with half the time are sex videos no matter what the search term happens to be.
For instance, when I did a search for “sports”, the second top sponsored result was for “WWE Divas, Sexy Sports Girls.” (See screen shot above). I don’t think the girl in the video it links to (titled “Sexy Webcam Girl Hot Babe Big Boobs Huge Tits Nude Ass Gorgeous Butt Glamour Model “) is really a wrestler. YouTube prohibits ads for actual pornography, but videos with girls simulating sex in bikinis is okay.
It doesn’t really matter what the search term is, videos like that are going to get a lot of clicks. There are already plenty of videos like that on YouTube. Now they are going to become even esier to find.
Here’s a video of YouTube founder Chad Hurley with his clothes on explaining why he’s so excited about this new promotional opportunity for YouTubers: