Is Hulu putting up a pay wall around its Web TV site? Nope.

Does Hulu want to charge people to watch Web TV? Yes.

Confused? Don’t be.

It’s pretty straightforward: Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC Universal and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, doesn’t plan on charging people to watch the stuff it’s currently airing on the site–a mix of first-run shows from broadcast TV, a limited number of cable TV shows and a smattering of movies. But Hulu is trying to figure out how to create some kind of premium offering where you’ll pay for stuff that isn’t on the site right now.

That’s what Hulu’s backers have been saying for months, so it’s a little puzzling that News Corp. COO Chase Carey’s comments got folks worked up yesterday. Meanwhile, multiple sources familiar with Hulu’s plans tell me that…Hulu doesn’t actually have a plan yet, but it is trying to piece one together.

There are some pretty obvious ways to go here. Hulu could sell movies or TV shows on a pay-per-view basis, or it could sell subscriptions to shows it doesn’t offer now or to a deeper offering of shows it already has. You could call it “Hulu Plus” (no charge for that one, guys).

If you’re a fan of Fox’s “Family Guy,” for instance, Hulu is only of limited help: The site only has the most recent five episodes. So how much would you pay to watch the rest of them?

If you don’t have an answer for that, don’t worry–Team Hulu doesn’t know, either. Nor can they tell you if airing free shows on Hulu has cut into other revenue streams like broadcast TV advertising or DVD sales, even though “we’ve done a thousand regression analyses on this,” says an industry executive involved in the site.

Do bear in mind that this was a problem Hulu’s backers didn’t really envision when they were dreaming up the site; at the time, they were most concerned with building a video site that would allow them to barter with Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL).

Now they own one of the biggest video sites on the Web, one they say is performing ahead of plan. And Hulu is selling enough advertising that it’s coming close to reaching break-even, according to executives I spoke to this week.

But at the very least, adding a pay component to Hulu helps mollify those who fear the site is cannibalizing their existing businesses. Or who simply want another revenue stream. And a pay element dovetails with Hulu’s interest in joining up with the “authentication” movement pushed by cable guys like Comcast (CMCSA) and Time Warner (TWX).

Meanwhile, here’s the use case for Hulu that its backers originally envisioned–“catch up viewing.” I was on a plane when last night’s episode of the “The Office” aired, but I can watch the whole thing–with ads I can’t skip–on my laptop today. And so can you:

That clip, it turns out, is an unlikely homage to…wait for it…the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy. Really!

Go ahead and look at the first two clips at the bottom of the post. Note Hurley’s reference to “salt and pepper” and “two kings getting together.” See? In the Diddy clip, too. Who knew? (Okay, so at least one of you did).

Anyway, Hurley references both clips in a blog post he published this morning commemorating the anniversary of the sale. He also announced that the site is now serving up “well over” one billion video views per day. Last month comScore (SCOR) estimated YouTube was doing 10 billion views per month in the U.S.

And there’s also some general talk about the site’s evolution: Rather than focus solely on short clips, it’s also working to bring in movies and TV shows, etc. Nothing you didn’t know already.

Expect to hear more meaningful–but equally upbeat–talk about the site’s progress next Thursday, when Google (GOOG) announces its Q3 earnings.

Last quarter, Google executives went out of their way to talk up the site, and CFO Patrick Pichette said YouTube could start generating significant profits soon. This week, CEO Eric Schmidt also made a point of praising the YouTube deal and the site’s performance during a New York press conference.

Here, once again, is that famous clip:

And here’s the one Hurley was apparently referencing:

And here, once again, is the most popular clip in YouTube’s history:

As the intro to the video notes, Huntsberry was delivering his chat at a Federal Communications Commission hearing earlier this month. And as best I can tell, he was trying to alarm the FCC by pointing out just how easy it is to grab this stuff.

Along the way, he notes how many “legitimate” companies participate, in their own way, in the piracy value chain. Everyone from small storage start-up Drop.io, which allows users to host big data files for little or no charge, to Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), which can point people toward pirate havens, gets tarred by Huntsberry’s brush.

Not surprisingly, the video inspired all manner of invective from my fellow bloggers, who railed about Huntsberry’s lack of sophistication, his temerity for asking the FCC for help in stopping piracy, and other offenses real and imagined.

I find it hard to get worked up about it, though, since I hear this stuff from media executives all the time. The big difference is that the ones who are most impassioned about it usually don’t want the FCC to stop piracy. They want the industry to offer compelling alternatives to piracy.

For instance, here’s a site someone who works for a very big media company points me to with some regularity. Said executive says it’s the latest and greatest in piracy. I wouldn’t know, because the download scares me off (and in case my employer is wondering, I don’t condone piracy, but I do write about it). So I’ll take said executive’s word for it.

In any case, the idea is not to tip me off about a great place to hoover up a camcorded version of “Pandorum,” but to point out how fast this stuff evolves and how difficult it is stop. I don’t see any harm in noting that, right?

If you’re lucky, you can get the press to do some marketing for you. And if you’re really lucky, you can get Apple (AAPL) to do your marketing for you.

The newest set of Apple ads focuses on apps made by big brands–Barnes & Noble, Pizza Hut, Gap, Epicurious and Zagat–that can certainly afford their own promotional pushes.

And certainly those guys paid cash or some other kind of compensation for the consideration, right? Not as far as Advertising Age can discern: The trade mag notes with a bit of dismay that there isn’t any kind of application process to get into Apple commercials and that “the marketers in question didn’t request to be in the commercial at all.”

As far as I can tell, this mirrors Apple’s overall policy for iTunes, whether you’re talking about music, movies or apps: Unlike traditional retailers or even competitors like Amazon (AMZN), there’s no way to buy shelf space at Apple’s digital store. If you want Apple to shine a spotlight on your stuff, you just have to hope that someone there likes your stuff. AdAge:

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the story, but it’s clear the company looks for apps that use as many aspects of the iPhone as possible, such as sound, shaking, GPS or the camera. It also seemed to favor anything that highlights features of the newest operating system, such as in-app payment. Additionally, it appears that brands are given more credit for good user experience than whether or not they can match Apple’s own cool factor.

Pizza Hut, for instance, doesn’t have many common associations with the tech giant but its app was the first from the quick-service industry that let users place delivery orders.

*Note that Apple’s app ecosystem has grown faster than its ad agency expected; the new campaigns announce that there are 75,000 apps, but that number is 10,000 short, according to a release Cupertino put out yesterday.

You know what? I think the conventional wisdom is right on this one. Take a look at this clever test from NewTeeVee, which compares the nano’s new camera with a Flip Ultra SD.

The good folks at NewTeeVee declare that the Flip’s camera offers a “MUCH better picture,” and since they did the work here I won’t argue with them.

But I don’t think the gap between the two cameras is big enough to help Flip. If you’re really serious about video quality, you’re probably not carrying a Flip to begin with. And given the choice between a video camera that takes a decent picture and one that also lets you listen to music, watch movies and play games…well, that’s a tough sell, even if you’ve got Cisco’s (CSCO) marketing dollars backing you up.

In other words, Apple (AAPL) has passed my “good enough” test. The nano doesn’t do the job as well as a single-use device, but it’s adequate for my needs. The only question for me is whether I spring for a nano now, or hold off in the hopes that the iPod touch line gets a camera sooner than later.

Does Google need a Hollywood guide?

It may be getting one: Jim Wiatt, the former head of the fabled William Morris talent agency, has been talking to the company about a consulting gig for its YouTube video site.

Wiatt, who is leaving his old job in the aftermath of his agency’s highly contentious merger with the Endeavor agency, discussed the idea with Google and YouTube executives in Mountain View last week, multiple sources said.

Wiatt hasn’t signed a deal and may end up pursuing something else instead, I’m told.

But the role would make sense, given that Wiatt has already served as a de facto guide for Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has been trying to ingratiate his company with studio and network executives for some time.

(Schmidt has spent enough time in Hollywood to justify plunking down a reported $20 million for an estate in Montecito, a wealthy resort town an hour or so outside of Beverly Hills.)

Google (GOOG) has tried to convince Hollywood to bring more of its content over to the world’s largest video site, but its biggest players have so far resisted, offering the site promotional trailers but little else. Meanwhile Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC and Disney’s (DIS) ABC has staked out a reputation as the go-to site for free “premium” movies and TV shows.

Earlier this year, reports surfaced that William Morris and Google had reached a pact that would steer the agency’s high-profile clients to make and star in YouTube videos.

Neither company ever formally acknowledged the so-called “YouTube Gold” program, and it’s not clear if it ever got off the ground. But, in any case, William Morris has more or less been absorbed by onetime rival Endeavor, headed by Ari Emanuel, leaving Wiatt looking for other work.

Wiatt, via a spokesman, declined to comment. YouTube offered up this statement via email: “We are constantly exploring opportunities to reward the talented members of the YouTube community, including helping to distribute their content around the Web and beyond.”

[News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.]

[Image credit: Sorn]

Part of the magic trick will involve cutting costs. That’s hard to see play out in real time, except when we get flare-ups like YouTube’s fight with Warner Music Group (WMG) over new contract terms. The other part of the abracadabra–selling more ads on more videos, particularly “viral” hits–is easier to spot, particularly because YouTube keeps pointing it out.

For instance: Yesterday’s announcement that the site would start attaching ads to many more popular videos submitted by users and share the proceeds with the uploaders.

YouTube was typically vague about how the plan will work, but the most telling news is that it thinks it can increase the number of “partners” it shares ad revenue with from “thousands” to “tens of thousands.”

Translation: All those skateboarding dog videos you make fun of? We’re going to turn them into money machines. Just watch!

I’m going to make an educated guess and posit that for all the effort YouTube has made  to “monetize”–I hate that word, but what can you do?–its gazillions of videos, its most important revenue generator is still its homepage. YouTube’s competitors think a one-day “takeover” there may cost an advertiser as much as $500,000.

There’s not a whole lot of upside left for YouTube in the homepage, though. It’s the gateway to the world’s biggest video site, and the second-biggest search engine, and you either want to advertise on it or you don’t.

But the rest of site remains a big opportunity. YouTube can keep chasing splashy “premium content” deals like the ones it has struck with Sony (SNE), Disney (DIS) and Time Warner (TWX). And at the same time, it can try selling more of the “long tail”–basically, everything that isn’t “premium.”

YouTube’s long-tail efforts sometimes get ignored, especially when the site is compared to Hulu and its array of TV shows and movies. But YouTube executives have insisted for a while that long-tail videos will play a big role in the site’s future, and the new move underscores that.

“I think they are working [the long tail] hard but are not articulating it well,” the head of a competing Web video company told me earlier this month. “It may be because they are worried about how advertisers and agencies will view them, but it may also be that they are not revealing it all until it’s farther along.” Yesterday, YouTube gave us another peek.

But you won’t be seeing full-length shows or movies from Time Warner (TWX) on the world’s biggest video site–it’s saving those for cable companies that play along with its “TV Everywhere” plan.

So: If you want to see bits of programming from networks like CNN and the Cartoon Network and shows like “Gossip Girl,” you can check them out on YouTube in coming months. But if you want to see the whole thing, you’re either going to have to watch them on your TV set or via Web experiments like the one Comcast (CMCSA) is trying out for its subscribers.

Nothing wrong with clips, by the way: There’s a lot of TV programming (in particular) that lends itself well to bite-sized sampling–Turner’s “Adult Swim,” for instance should be great (see below). But YouTube has been trying to get networks and studios to give up full-length stuff and hasn’t had a lot of luck, at least not compared to the offerings at Hulu.

YouTube’s Jordan Hoffner, who hammers out these deals, wouldn’t go into detail about them with me, but he confirmed that they follow the same rough template as deals his company has forged with Sony (SNE) and Disney (DIS): The content providers get to embed their own video player within YouTube and control ad sales.

Are there more pacts in the works? Sort of, Hoffner says: “We’ve gotten a lot of deals done. You look at the media landscape, and there are only a handful of companies left that we don’t have partnerships with.”

In the meantime here’s a grainy, unsanctioned clip that I hope makes it onto YouTube in a higher-def form once the deal kicks in: Indie rock gods Pavement performing on “Space Ghost” in 1997.

A reminder of the site’s outlaw status is splashed up on the site’s front page right now, in the form of a feature promoting “DJ Joel’s $675,000 Mixtape,” which is supposedly “Approved by the RIAA,” the U.S. lobbying/litigating arm of the big music labels.

It’s not approved by the RIAA, of course. Instead, the feature steers visitors to a page that where they can illegally download 30 songs that just cost grad student Joel Tenenbaum $675,000. That’s the amount a federal jury decided he owed the RIAA after being found guilty of copyright violations for sharing the tunes via a filesharing network.

It’s the kind of cheeky move The Pirate Bay revels in and one of the reasons the Web site has such a large and devoted base of users. The main reason, of course, is that The Pirate Bay is a huge repository for free, illegal copies of movies, music, games.

That’s supposedly going to stop after August 27, when Global Gaming Factory X, a Swedish software/Internet cafe outfit, says it will go through with plans to buy the site, and then try to make it legal.

As I’ve explained before, there’s no chance that will happen.

Even if the deal really goes through, the only way The Pirate Bay’s users will stick around is if they can continue to grab whatever they want, whenever they want. And there’s no way the big music labels and movie studios and videogame companies, et al, are going to go for that.

But it will be interesting to watch!

In the meantime, here’s the track listing for the 30 songs that landed Tenenbaum in trouble. I’m pretty sure most of them are available at Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store:

01 – Incubus – New Skin
02 – Green Day – Minority
03 – Outkast – Wheelz of Steel
04 – Incubus – Pardon Me
05 – Nirvana – Come As You Are
06 – Green Day – When I Come Around
07 – Green Day – Nice Guys Finish Last
08 – Nirvana – Heart Shaped Box
09 – Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug
10 – Blink 182 – Adam’s Song
11 – Limp Bizkit – Rearranged
12 – Limp Bizkit – Leech
13 – Linkin Park – Crawling Hybrid
14 – Deftones – Be Quiet And Drive
15 – The Fugees – Killing Me Softly
16 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication
17 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – By The Way
18 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – My Friends
19 – Beck – Loser
20 – Eminem – My Name Is
21 – Eminem – Drug Ballad
22 – Eminem – Cleaning Out My Closet
23 – Beastie Boys – (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)
24 – The Ramones – The KKK Took My Baby Away
25 – Monster Magnet – Look To Your Orb For The Warning
26 – Aerosmith – Pink
27 – OutKast – Rosa Parks
28 – Rage Against The Machine – Guerrilla Radio
29 – Goo Goo Dolls – Iris
30 – Aerosmith – Water Song/Janie’s Got A Gun

YouTube says it’s highlighting the Bill Murray/Dan Akroyd/Sigourney Weaver classic because this summer is the movie’s 25th anniversary.

Which is true! But I’m pretty sure the site is also trying to remind both Hollywood studios and run-of-the-mill YouTube users that the site can and does run more than just short, home-brewed clips–it’s got a bunch of movies, TV shows, and other “premium content,” too.

Not nearly as much as Hulu, of course, but YouTube is still trying to figure out how to change that. One way is by simply creating special sections to highlight movies and TV shows, which is one of the reasons it got Sony’s (SNE) Crackle on board last spring. Another is to offer content owners special incentives to hand over their stuff to the world’s biggest video site.

If you do watch “Ghostbusters,” for instance, note that the traditional YouTube player has been replaced by one from Crackle. YouTube also recently agreed to let Disney’s ESPN.com (ESPN) use its own player as well.

On the other hand, there’s still plenty of other “premium content” on YouTube that doesn’t appear to be sanctioned by the contents’ owners and that doesn’t appear to be generating any revenue or other benefit for them, either. Like this grainy, but still excellent, “Ghostbusters” excerpt:

Hence, another round of funding for 5min, a video start-up that just raised a $7.5 million B round. New investor Globespan Capital Partners led the round, and Spark Capital, the VC shop that has made several video bets (along with a big one in Twitter) made a second investment.

5min has now raised $12.5 million since 2007. Co-founder Ran Harnevo won’t discuss valuation, though I’m told it’s up from its A round, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

“People do understand that video is the next thing. They just don’t see reasonable business models,” Harnevo says. “That’s the next thing that you have to do. You have to go into VCs and say, “I know how to do this.”

The company, which is based in New York City but has its roots in Israel, takes a different tack toward video than the would-be YouTubes: Rather than serving as a portal for user-generated clips or movies and TV shows, it cobbles together a library of how-to videos and distributes them to sites that don’t have any videos of their own. It now claims to reach 14 million video views across 200 sites.

There’s plenty of competition for how-to sites and videos, too, of course. But Harnevo claims that he’s been able to sell all of his inventory so far, and predicts he’ll be profitable in the next 18 months.

He was similarly optimistic six months ago, when he let me try my hand at conducting an interview with a Flip Mino. I never ended up publishing the clip, but now seems like a good time to do so–as long as you’re willing to put up with crummy sound, shaky camerawork and a stretched image. As I said, I was trying this stuff out.

Just about every thing we discussed in this interview still holds up, except that 5min now boasts 100,000 videos, up from 50,000 in December.

]]> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090723/another-bet-on-video-how-to-startup-5min-raises-75-million/feed/ 0 http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090717/think-you-own-the-book-you-bought-for-your-kindle-you-dont-says-amazon/ http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090717/think-you-own-the-book-you-bought-for-your-kindle-you-dont-says-amazon/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:50:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=9446 Buy an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle recently? You might want to check to see if it’s still on your device. Kindle users are complaining that the e-commerce giant has removed titles from their machines this week and given them refunds in their place.

What happened? The details are fuzzy, but apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon (AMZN) with two George Orwell titles has decided that it doesn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went.

Readers described their experiences at this Amazon forum, and one of them included this note she said she received from Amazon customer service explaining what happened:

The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

Normally, I’m pretty cavalier about the complaints that people make about the evils of digital rights management–the locks and restrictions distributors often attach to digital media like music, movies and books–but this is the sort of incident that gives those gripes some gravitas. If you’re buying bits, you ought to own those bits, just as you would when you plunk down dollars for a CD, a book or any other physical item.

Doubly confusing: As far as I can tell, Amazon’s license terms don’t have any loophole that allows for this. The section on “digital content” explains that I don’t have the right to “sell, rent, lease, distribute,” etc., the stuff I buy from Amazon. But it sure looks like stuff I buy, I keep:

Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

So, what am I missing here? I’ve asked Amazon for comment, but if anyone has any bright ideas, sound off in comments below.

UPDATE: Amazon says the copies it sold were “illegal”, because the publisher never had the rights to them. But it says that going forward, it won’t be removing books from customer’s Kindles “in these circumstances”.

]]> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090717/think-you-own-the-book-you-bought-for-your-kindle-you-dont-says-amazon/feed/ 5 http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090706/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-video-game-boom-gamers-reduce-reuse-recycle/ http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090706/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-video-game-boom-gamers-reduce-reuse-recycle/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:47:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=8960 As we lurched into the recession a year ago, pundits predicted that the videogame business would do fine during the collapse. When times are tough, they argued, people might not go out to see movies, but  gamers would huddle in their basements and play Grand Theft Auto over and over and over.

But game sales have been weak in 2009, even as movie theaters set box office records. What gives?

I’ll let someone else try to explain the movie side of the ledger (although those box office numbers aren’t always what they seem to be). But it turns out that there’s a simple explanation for game slump: It’s that gamers are huddled in their basements playing Grand Theft Auto over and over and over.

Gamers are indeed spending more time playing videogames, say new data from Nielsen. It’s just that gamers aren’t spending more money on games. Instead, they’re playing the games they have, buying used games, and increasingly turning to game subscription services.

Here’s the argument in chart form–you can get a summary here or download the full report here (PDF). Click on the charts to enlarge:

Hours played:

Used games purchased:

Subscription rate:

All of which explains why Best Buy (BBY) and Wal-Mart (WMT) are both getting into the used game business and why Blockbuster (BBI) and GameFly are expanding their game rental business. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to my game of Hover Kart.

]]> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090706/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-video-game-boom-gamers-reduce-reuse-recycle/feed/ 0 http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090622/could-movies-books-and-music-be-amazons-achilles-heel/ http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090622/could-movies-books-and-music-be-amazons-achilles-heel/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:58:36 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=8448 Even as the rest of the retail world stumbled in the past year, Amazon kept cruising and increasing market share. So if a cratering economy can’t hurt the e-commerce giant, what could? Citigroup (C) analyst Mark Mahaney throws out a suggestion: Movies, books and music–the same stuff that helped Amazon get the lead it enjoys today.

Mahaney’s argument is simple: 1) Media sales represent half of Amazon’s North American business and 2) They have been slowing consistently for a while. Here’s what the numbers look like (click to enlarge):

Why are media sales slowing down? Mahaney, an Amazon (AMZN) bull, throws out some ideas:

This may well be the most discretionary/recession-sensitive segment of Amazon. That surely explains part of the slowdown. But three other factors may be material. First, this segment includes Books, Music, and Videos (in addition to Video Game Software)–products that have had inherently slow overall retail growth over the last few years. Second, this segment includes products that are over-indexed in terms of Internet penetration. And third, this segment contains products that are being rapidly digitized–even the plain old book, thanks in part to the Kindle.

The last point is the most interesting one to chew on because Amazon bulls usually argue that the company is the best-positioned player to adapt to the digitization of media. And they’re probably right. But it sure does increase the pressure on the company to get it right, which will probably involve charging more for the digital music and books than it does now.

]]> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090622/could-movies-books-and-music-be-amazons-achilles-heel/feed/ 0 http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090416/youtube-preps-its-hulu-answer-movies-tv-shows/ http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090416/youtube-preps-its-hulu-answer-movies-tv-shows/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:52:23 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6403 Here’s Google’s sort-of answer to Hulu: A newly designed page to showcase TV shows and movies, along with new players and a new ad strategy.

What’s not included: almost any first-run TV show or newly released movie. That’s the content that’s made Hulu successful and what’s also driven traffic to offerings from CBS and Disney’s ABC.

You can’t accuse the Google guys of overselling this: In a press conference today, they described it as a “first step, a baby step.”

Google (GOOG) did say that it had added new content partners, but it was maddeningly imprecise about which ones it had signed up and what content they were providing. The company did confirm, however, that Sony (SNE), via its Crackle video site, would be providing content.

Google also said that it now has “thousands” of television shows and “hundreds” of movies; prior to this, the company said its catalog consisted of just “hundreds” of TV shows and “dozens” of movies.

But this is still primarily “long tail” stuff. The only first-run CBS (CBS) show YouTube offers, for instance, is “Harper’s Island,” which YouTube already offered. And if you recognize any of the following new YouTube partners, then it means you’re a show business insider: Endemol, Anime Network, Scott Entertainment, Entertainment Rights, Shout Factory, Telenext Media, Documentary Channel, First Look Studios, IndieFlix, Saavn, Snag Films, Venevision and Bandai.

Still, YouTube needs as much licensed content it can get its hands on in order to lure more advertisers to the site, which has underperformed to date.

Advertisers who do want to sign up will have a new option: a “Google TV ads” product that inserts ads into the shows, à la Google’s Adsense for Web publishers. Google said it will use “pre-roll,” “mid-roll” and “post-roll” ads–i.e., video ads that run before, during and after the movie or TV show–as well as the overlay ads that cover the bottom part of the screen, briefly, with a translucent pitch.

Google will also allow video providers to sell their own content, and in some cases, will allow them to use their own video player, a first for the company. Sony, for instance, will use its Crackle video player for its content.

Reports that YouTube had a deal with Sony to show full-length movies and TV shows on the site surfaced earlier this month. Last month, reports also indicated that YouTube was talking to Disney (DIS) about getting movies and ABC TV shows on the site, but since then I’ve been told that Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and GE’s (GE) NBC, has all but locked up ABC shows for an exclusive deal.

Here are two releases, one describing the new section and the other describing the new ad product. Screenshots follow.

Watch Shows and Movies on YouTube: Today we’re excited to announce a new destination for television shows and an improved landing page for movies on YouTube, where partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, the BBC and many others have made thousands of television episodes and hundreds of movies available for you to watch, comment on, favorite and share. This addition is one of many efforts underway to ensure that we’re offering you all the different kinds of video you want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to music videos and full-length films and TV shows.

To help you navigate through all this great content, we’re introducing two new tabs to the YouTube masthead: the “Shows” tab allows you to browse shows by genre, network, title and popularity, while the “Subscriptions” tab will grant logged-in users one-click access to fresh content from their favorite creators.

Another change you’ll notice today is the wider roll-out of in-stream ads, which we’ve been testing since October, to support our shows and movies content — not unlike what you might see when viewing this type of content on TV.

While shows and movies are currently limited to users in the US, we look forward to expanding to other regions as soon as possible.

We hope you enjoy watching shows and movies on YouTube. There’s still work to be done and we look forward to iterating with you, whether that’s rolling out new engagement features, expanding our content offering or improving your viewing experience. And, as with everything we do, we’ll track your usage and feedback to preserve your fundamental YouTube experience while we take these steps to enhance it.

Yours,
Sara Pollack
Entertainment Marketing Manager
The YouTube Team

Reach TV viewers through more than one screen
By Geoff Smith, Product Manager for Google TV Ads

Google TV Ads makes it easy for advertisers of all sizes to reach customers watching television. These days, many full-length television programs are also available for Internet users to watch online. These programs may appear in various places, including the websites of the networks which originally broadcast them and on other sites that specialize in video content. What if an advertiser wants to reach the audience of a particular program, no matter whether they’re watching on a television or online?

We’re excited to announce the beta launch of Google TV Ads Online. This is a new feature of Google TV Ads that lets advertisers place commercials into the ad breaks of TV programs watched online. It works in the same way as Google TV Ads: advertisers can target specific programs and select their cost-per-thousand (CPM) bid. Based on their targets, budget and bid, ads are inserted in the same program breaks that were designed for advertising when the programs first aired. (Ads may also be shown “pre-roll”, before the program begins, or after the online presentation of the program “post-roll.”) And like Google TV ads, we provide advertisers with measurement tools that give greater insight into how their ads perform with users.

One website where viewers are consuming more and more full-length content online is YouTube. Today, YouTube launched a new destination for full-length shows and movies, and advertisers will be able to use Google TV Ads Online to reach the millions of people who come to YouTube to watch this content. That’s not only good for advertisers, but content partners who are looking to generate revenue from their videos online. Ads will also be shown on other websites that carry full-length video programs.

Google TV Ads Online is still in beta and available to advertisers by invitation only. If you’re interested in learning more about it or would like to be considered for the program, please contact Erin Bouchier at erinb@google.com.

Here’s what the new YouTube video player looks like in full-screen mode (click to enlarge):

And here’s a “landing page” for YouTube TV shows:

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