YouTube is making a dramatic change to its mobile web presence. This week, YouTube revealed that it will begin incorporating advertising services throughout the mobile site.
Naturally, YouTube is optimistic that advertisers will find enormous value in placing adds for their products and services on YouTube’s mobile site – a mobile presence that realized a 160% traffic increase in 2009.
Adds will run across the home, search, and browse pages in both the US and Japanese mobile YouTube sites.
According to the YouTube Biz Blog:
The increased usage of high-end devices like the iPhone and Android is also making mobile advertising easier and more effective for advertisers.
“Test campaigns” are already underway by L’Oreal and Land Rover. Initial results indicate promising rates of click-throughs, positive user experiences, and greater brand awareness.
We’ve already seen some early campaigns run on YouTube’s mobile site by advertisers like Sony (for the DVD release of “District 9”) and Kia, both of whom were able to easily reach their target audience, no matter where they were looking for video.
The addition of advertising space to YouTube’s mobile website is not only of great interest to mobile marketers, it also comes as a blow to rabid YouTube critics claiming that YouTube would falter in finding new ways to create profitable revenue models.
