Last week the world watched in wonder as Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz's wedding party transformed a familiar and predictable tradition into something spontaneous and just flat-out fun. The video, set to R&B star Chris Brown's hypnotic dance jam "Forever," became an overnight sensation, accumulating more than 10 million views on YouTube in less than one week. But as with all great YouTube videos, there's more to this story than simple view counts.

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights holders control their content on our site. The rights holders for "Forever" used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes. As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the massive wave of popularity generated by "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" — in the last week, searches for "Chris Brown Forever" on YouTube have skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site:

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on the "JK Wedding Entrance" video is 2x the average of other Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this newfound interest in downloading "Forever" goes beyond the viral video itself: "JK Wedding Entrance" also appears to have influenced the official "Forever" music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.

So, what does all of this mean? Despite compelling data and studies around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown's "Forever" has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon's best selling MP3 list. We've seen similar successes in the past with partners like Monty Python.

One of our main goals at YouTube is to help content creators effectively make money from the distribution of their content online. That they can do so in a way that brings artists and our community together to create fun, spontaneous and inspiring works, is one of the best and most exciting things about YouTube.

Posted by Chris LaRosa, Technical Account Manager, and Ali Sandler, Music Partner Manager

Did you know that the Cookie Monster was a spokesperson for Frito Lay? Have you ever ventured inside the Labyrinth? Do you want to learn more about the creative genius who brought us Fraggle Rock, The Muppets, and Sesame Street?



Now you can as the Henson Company has officially launched a YouTube channel. Check out a number of curated playlists including "Uncle Travelling Matt" segments shot internationally, clips from 80's classic "Fraggle Rock," behind-the-scenes video of the Henson creative process, and bloopers, gags and outtakes. There is also an archival playlist of rare and never-before-seen commercials, experimentals and shorts.

Tune in to the Henson Company channel for weekly updates.

Posted by Melissa Crounse, Strategic Partner Manager

Update (7/29): Link to registration page has been updated and now works. Sorry for any inconvenience.

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The Effie Awards, founded in 1968 by the New York Chapter of the American Marketing Association and now run by Effie Worldwide, celebrate best-in-class marketing online and off. Specifically, Effie Worldwide rewards "Ideas that Work": great ideas that achieve real results and the strategy that goes into creating them. Today, the Effies has launched a home for excellence in marketing on YouTube with the Effie Worldwide Channel. The channel will feature video case studies of Effie-winning campaigns across industries, from Rolling Rock to Stride.

Last year, YouTube played a role in more than 50% of Effie-winning campaigns. For some champs, YouTube was a fundamental part of their campaign, where homepage placements and contests were designed to engage the community; for others, it was a happy accident when our community noticed the marketing effort and carried it forward virally, via parodies, video responses, comments, ratings, and sharing. Regardless, Effie-winning campaigns prove that a great piece of content with a message that resonates with consumers can generate momentum anywhere, whether offline (around the watercooler) or online in places like YouTube.

We hope you'll find this channel a useful tool as you plan your next campaigns. We also invite you to join us as we dig deeper into three winning campaigns next month in Part II of a four-part webinar series, "Effie Case Studies: Ideas That Worked." (You can register for this seminar on this page.) This free webinar will be co-hosted by Effie Worldwide and YouTube, and will feature speakers from the agencies and clients who created these outstanding campaigns. The webinar will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the most effective marketing ideas and strategies of the year. You'll learn how three award-winning campaigns -- McDonald's "Unsnobby Coffee" (DDB West), Clorox Green Works' "The Reverse Grafitti Project" (DDB West and the Clorox Company), and Mastercard's "Priceless Pep Talks" (Mcann-Erickson) -- arrived at their big ideas, effectively brought those ideas to life in engaging and interactive ways, and achieved real marketplace results.

And if you miss the live broadcast, just check the Effie Worldwide Channel -- an on-demand version will be posted there too.

Posted by Kristin Kovner, Industry Marketing Manager

We've been working hard to increase the amount of monetizable content available on YouTube, but we think it's also important to develop more effective ways for partners to monetize it. In some cases, we've worked with partners to leverage the strength of their own sales forces, so they can sell their own ads on YouTube. This has proven to be a valuable option for partners who can package together all their content for advertisers, no matter where it's distributed online. Currently, about 50 partners can sell their own ads against millions of impressions on YouTube every day.

Today we're announcing a trial with FreeWheel that will allow some partners who sell their own ads to serve those ads directly into their videos on YouTube. (Previously, ads sold by these partners were still served by YouTube.) This will create a more centralized, streamlined process for partners in the test program, making it easier for them to sell ads and make even more money from their content. This is an exciting development, because more effective monetization is good for everyone -- more money for partners, large and small, leads to the creation of even higher quality content, which leads to a better user experience and more opportunities for advertisers and the YouTube community overall.

As we are in the early stages of this test, this feature is currently only available to a closed set of beta partners. Stay tuned for announcements when we expand the program in the near future.

Posted by Phil Farhi, Product Manager

Today we launched a new feature that gives uploaders the ability to make some information collected in YouTube Insight available publicly to anyone watching their videos on YouTube. Now when you watch a video, you can learn even more about it and its audience: on the watch page, under the "Statistics & Data" section, users will be able to see more information about a video's views over time, its popularity in different parts of the world, the top drivers of traffic, and the video's top three audience demographics.


This new feature is great for our users, as it makes the site more transparent and the videos you're watching more interesting. But there are added benefits for partners and advertisers. For partners, allowing statistics to be displayed with your videos is actually a great way to attract advertisers. We know that advertisers are looking for partners who have strong views and engaged audiences -- we've seen popular users like Paul Telner and Chris Bosh leverage YouTube Insight to sign business deals and sponsorships -- so we hope this feature will help you demonstrate the value of your content in new, more visible ways. Advertisers can also use this feature to find videos that match their target audience, or discover new partners and content for previously untapped opportunities.

For more information about Statistics and Data, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Jonas Yngvesson, Software Engineer

Demand Media is one of the largest partners on YouTube, with over 168,000 videos on the site. They have been early adopters of many of our partner and advertiser offerings, and recently announced that they'd surpassed 1 billion views of their videos on YouTube and their network sites.

For the second interview in our "Five Questions" series, we chatted with Steven Kydd, EVP of Demand Studios, about content creation, how-to videos, and the virtues of an open platform.

1. How would you describe your company's approach to content creation?

Demand Studios is comprised of a large network of professional filmmakers who create engaging content for our enthusiast brands like LIVESTRONG.com, eHow, and Golflink.com. We utilize the talents of over 10,0000 creators to create high-quality content for niche audiences the world over. Each month, Demand Studios creates thousands of new videos, which is a rate of content creation that few can match. Many of our filmmakers have worked for major broadcasters and cable networks and have won Emmy and Sundance Film Festival awards. These professionals are turning to Demand Studios for steady income, a large supply of interesting projects, so it's in our mutual interest to help them find a large audience online.

2. How-to content is very popular on YouTube. What has been the key to ExpertVillage and eHow's success on the site?

By having thousands of videos in popular categories like home improvement, sports, beauty, and martial arts, the ExpertVillage channel aggregated subscribers, ratings and comments very quickly. As our content gained momentum in the marketplace, we continually raised the quality standards each new video we created – in turn gaining the trust of our users and major advertisers. During that same time period, YouTube was actively seeking more HD video to broaden their appeal, so we focused on adding high-quality video that spans the “head, torso, and long tail” of topic areas. In our view, it's about giving people what they're looking for.

3. What are the benefits of a video-everywhere approach, as opposed to one that limits content distribution to certain websites on an exclusive basis?

We are firm believers in creating high-quality content that audiences can easily find, which is why we have uploaded virtually our entire library to YouTube. While some content owners still hope that audiences will “tune in” to their channels exclusively, we have seen that our content on YouTube INCREASES brand awareness and traffic to our owned and operated websites – a win-win for both parties. Broad distribution is a great way to assure the best and most exposure to your brand – and incremental revenue.

4. Demand Media is generating seven-figures a year from YouTube, and is profitable. Are there any specific ad formats or monetization strategies that you see as key drivers of revenue?

Since 2007, we have been a beta-tester of almost every new form of monetization YouTube has introduced. As such, we have witnessed first-hand YouTube’s ability to provide targeted and contextual monetization solutions while retaining a quality user experience. We’ve seen better-than-average click-through rates and CPMs with overlays and banners and have participated in several premium content events in conjunction with YouTube and leading brand advertisers. We also think there is an opportunity for greater integration with Click-to-Buy, similar to what YouTube is currently doing with music and DVDs.

5. What's your favorite YouTube video?

I guess I have to pick a how-to video. My golf game could use LOTS of improvement so I’m thrilled we have Tiger Wood’s instructor, Hank Haney, starring in a series of videos on Golflink's YouTube channel. His tips on how to improve my downswing were really helpful.

Posted by Obadiah Greenberg, Strategic Partner Manager

One of our favorite shows at YouTube is MythBusters, the Discovery Channel's popular science program in which hosts Jamie and Adam bravely attempt to debunk urban legends. For those of us who thought you could jump start a car with a defibrillator, we consider this show a public service.

Even though we're not drafting big rigs, or getting shot by 20,000 paintballs, we like to do a little myth busting as well. Too often, stories dredge up issues about YouTube products, metrics, or the state of our business that we thought were settled a long time ago. So while we can't tell you which kind of Mentos are better for blowing up Diet Cokes, we can debunk the top five myths about YouTube we repeatedly see:

Myth 1: YouTube is limited to short-form user-generated content. We have thousands of premium content partners, from Sony to Disney to Universal Music, and fans can find hundreds of full-length feature films and thousands of full-length TV episodes on YouTube. The world premiere of Joy Luck Club director Wayne Wang's film, "The Princess of Nebraska," was viewed 165,000+ times during the first 48 hours -- the equivalent of landing the 15th spot on Hollywood box office charts.

Myth 2: YouTube videos are grainy and of poor quality. It was only eight months ago that we launched HD videos on YouTube, and we already have more HD videos than any other video site. Hundreds of thousands of HD videos are uploaded to the site every month, and tens of millions are viewed every day. Earlier this year, CNET's WebWare called YouTube the best HD video service on the web.

Myth 3: Traffic, growth, and uploads are bad for YouTube's bottom line. There's been a lot of speculation lately about how much it costs to run YouTube. With revenue estimates ranging from $120 million to $500 million, and costs on an equally large spectrum, it seems people can pick any number to fit any theory they have about our business. The truth is that all our infrastructure is built from scratch, which means models that use standard industry pricing are too high when it comes to bandwidth and similar costs. We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad.

Myth 4: Advertisers are afraid of YouTube. Over 70% of Ad Age Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube in 2008. They're buying our home page, Promoted Videos, overlays, and in-stream ads. Many are organizing contests that encourage the uploading of user videos to their brand channels, or running advertising exclusively on popular user partner content (see Carl's Jr.). Advertisers just want control, so we're continuing to develop tools and targeting products that give advertisers more control over where their ads appear on the site. We'll announce more on that front soon.

Myth 5: YouTube is only monetizing 3-5% of the site. This oft-cited statistic is old and wrong, and continues to raise much speculation. In our view, the percentage is far less important than the total number of monetized views, and we are now helping partners generate revenue from hundreds of millions of video views in the U.S. every week (and billions worldwide), more than any other video site has total views. Monetized views have more than tripled in the past year, as we're adding partner content very quickly and doing a better job of promoting their videos across the site.

These myths are officially busted.

Posted by Chris Dale and Aaron Zamost, Communications and Public Affairs

(Cross-posted from the Agency Ads Solutions Blog)

When you're a company that has been around for more than a century, you've not only been doing something right, but you also have the pressure to maintain that reputation. Enter Embarq, a telecommunications provider which started out in 1899 as the Brown Telephone Company, and continues to offer its services to customers across 18 states. How was Embarq able to continue sharing its innovations with customers and remain a strong brand in an increasingly competitive landscape? Enter YouTube.

Embarq employed a number of strategies on YouTube, including targeted display ads and a YouTube Brand Channel, and developed a video contest in partnership with the digital marketing agency iCrossing. These tactics resulted in increased viewership of its how-to videos, positive brand references on forums and blogs, and strong sales of its high-speed Internet service with the lowest cost-per-order of any campaign run during that timeframe. According to Zena Weist, manager of interactive brand strategy for Embarq:

“The results not only showed us how effective YouTube is as a marketing platform, but it also showed us what content really resonates with our audience."

How can you also find success with brand advertising on YouTube?

1. Be where users are: advertise on YouTube. You can promote your clients' video content using YouTube Promoted Videos, which shows ads based on keyword searches. You can also directly target specific pages where you know the customers will be using text, video and image ads. The Placement Tool can help you find the right sites and easily upload them to your clients' accounts.

2. Centralize communication strategy with a YouTube channel. All users may create channels for free. Using a YouTube channel, clients can centralize video content and educate and communicate with customers in a single location. If you think your clients qualify, you may also consider creating a YouTube Brand Channel like Embarq.

3. Engage users with a contest. Contests are an effective way to engage users with your brand and increase opportunities for viral marketing. Paid advertisers may be able to run contests through the official YouTube "Contests" section.

Posted by Stephanie Kong, Tech Comm Marketing

Last week, I had the opportunity to deliver the opening keynote address at LA TV Fest, a two-day conference put on by the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), an organization on which I serve on the Board of Directors. The festival brings together television and web producers, development executives, agents, and brand marketers.

During the keynote, I discussed YouTube's latest developments in the long-form content space and walked the audience through YouTube's premium content Shows and Movies destination. I concluded my remarks with a few tips for content producers, based on my experience:

- Make your content discoverable. There are 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Search is a very popular method of discovery, and using appropriate tags and descriptions, along with products like Promoted Videos, makes it easier for people on YouTube to discover your videos.

- Create safe content. Brand-friendly content is much easier to package and sell to an advertiser or an advertising agency.

- Don't spend too much money on production. What qualifies as "too much"? It will vary by producer, but some of the site's most popular content creators post videos with relatively low production value. Furthermore, a great concept can pique the interest of a backer who can provide greater financial support for your next 10 episodes.

To celebrate excellence in independently produced content for the web, YouTube served as a sponsor of the Second Annual NATPE Next TV Competition, which aims to discover the best new made-for-web pilots across seven genres, and we were proud to support the contest's first-ever "Longform" category. The finalists and winners were chosen by the community -- who could text in their votes -- and a panel of experts. You can see the winners of all genres on the official NATPE YouTube Channel.

Congrats to all who participated.

Posted by Jordan Hoffner, Director of Partnerships

From Dwight Howard dunks to Skateboarding Twins' kickflips, sports on YouTube has always been big. Today, YouTube sports fans have even more reason to cheer: ESPN clips are now available on our site. The deal, officially announced in March, is part of our new partnership with Disney. And in the spirit of this great new content coming to YouTube, the folks at ESPN have made a YouTube community welcome video in which you just might notice a few characters:



On their new channel, www.youtube.com/ESPN, you'll find Albert Pujols' towering home runs and Peyton Manning's laser passes, Kobe Bryant's turnaround jumpers and Brock Lesnar's haymakers, the hottest breaking news stories and a ton of original ESPN shows. SportsCenter Right Now — a twice-daily capsule of top sports stories — will also live on the channel, as will clips from Outside the Lines, E:60, Mike and Mike in the Morning, Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn and Kenny Mayne's original digital series Mayne Street, as well as special packages and playlists created around events like the X Games (which is July 30-August 2). All of this is viewable through a special ESPN video player on the watch page and at YouTube's sports hub, www.youtube.com/sports.

Posted by Andrew Bangs, Sports Manager

Yesterday, the Search Engine Watch blog announced that Google and YouTube will be sponsoring a new track in conjunction with Search Engine Strategies San Jose on August 11: the Social Media & Video Strategies Forum.

We're excited to be a part of this first-time ever event. SES is one of the best places for businesses to learn about search; now that YouTube has millions of searches each day, it's only fitting that ClickZ and SES are expanding the agenda to include a full day dedicated to video and social media.

Attendees will begin the day with a keynote from Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, then hear from marketers across industries who are using social media and video to drive results for their businesses.

We'll share success stories from marketers who used our own platforms, including Google TV Ads and YouTube Promoted Videos, and we'll also glean best practices for making the most of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Meebo.

Please see the full agenda here, and register today.

We hope to see you on August 11 in San Jose!

Posted by Kristin Kovner, Industry Marketing Manager

Let's say you didn't get out much in the last month or, more likely, you've been really busy and you didn't get a chance to check out YouTube as often as you'd like. The Biz Blog comes to the rescue with a roundup of five essential things that happened on YouTube in the last month.

1. Documentation of Iranian Unrest
A contested election between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi led to massive demonstrations in Iran, with many Iranians going to social networks like YouTube and Twitter to share the upheaval in their country with the world. This clip illustrates just how many Iranians -- young and old -- are joining together to fight what they believe to be election fraud and government corruption. And this clip (viewer discretion advised) shows the death of Neda Soltan, a woman who quickly became the "face of the revolution." After her death, users made tribute videos as an homage to her.

2. Mobile Uploads Increase Exponentially
In the last six months, we've seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since June 19, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day. This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks. For more information, read the full post in the YouTube blog.

3. Trailers Hub Launches
A dedicated space for movie trailers now exists at www.youtube.com/trailers, where you can watch the latest previews, often months before the film opens.

4. Remembering Michael Jackson
The King of Pop left us with a legacy of No. 1 hits, top awards, and astounding dance moves. People flocked to YouTube to share their reflections, see rare footage, and of course replay the songs that so many of us can sing by heart.

5. Joe Jonas in a Tight Leotard
On a more lighthearted music note, the No. 1 Most Viewed video in June came from the Jonas Brothers, who showed no shame when it comes to promoting their new album. Watch Joe Jonas slip into a tight leotard to shimmy and shake to Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Lasting images to start the week...

Posted by Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager