World's Second-Largest Search Engine Starts Selling Ads

Google makes its billions selling ads against its text search results, charging marketers per click. Now its trying the same thing with YouTube, reports the Times:

An advertiser — or a video maker who wants to promote a work — can bid on keywords like “silly cats,” “financial crisis,” “James Bond,” or anything that strikes one’s fancy. The promoted videos are featured on the right-hand side of the YouTube search-results page with a small image and some text. Advertisers are charged when a viewer clicks on the ad, and can set a maximum price per click that they want to pay.

Smart move. Did you know YouTube alone sees more search queries than all of Yahoo's properties and more than twice as many as Microsoft's? See ComScore's expanded search query report for August, below.

But don't go expecting Google search revenues to go up 30% or anywhere close to it; no one searches YouTube looking to buy stuff they way they do with regular search.

So far, against searches like "tech news," "American Idol," and "Razorbacks football," we found movie trailer ads for the new Punisher and James Bond flicks as well as typical TV commercial from Lego -- pretty poor targeting, we think. One better sign: An ad for a Sony and Intel branded YouTube channel showed up next to search results on the terms "tech news."

We also expect some of those semi-professional video producers that Gartner says will earn $75 million this year and $1.5 billion by 2012 will spend a small portion of that promoting their shows on YouTube search.