The YouTube AdSense Player - Revisited

By Kenneth Fietz

While this sort of topic may be left best for a Blog somewhere in cyberspace, I elected to go ahead and write a follow-up article on what I have personally experienced with the YouTube/AdSense Player.

For a quick review, the YouTube/AdSense Player is a joint project where YouTube videos are played in your site and the border of the player displays relevant advertising to you site content. It all sound pretty cool but there are a few beefs I have with the current status of the program.

Firstly, the as the affiliate you have no choice in the approval of the videos being displayed on your site. There are no tags or similar tools to help ensure the video footage is somewhat related to the subject matter. I still stand by what I said though in my previous article in that the visitors do seem to like a bit of a break from the subject they are in and like the light hearted videos that appear in the player.

One good point is you can track the plays of the player through YouTube. You can see the amount of traffic that is using the link provided. So as a site manager you can see how well the player is working for your site in the video realm of things.

Now for a con. AdSense is a great affiliate program and for any who use it I am sure they would agree with my opinion. AdSense lists all the different ways in which you are using AdSense and provides a great amount of resource tools to analyze the performance of your account. That is all types except the YouTube Player advertisements. This oversight leaves the site manager with no information on a click through rate or CPM for the player advertisements. I would have to assume that if it is set for "content" then the total numbers for the "content" account also include those content ads from the player. So while AdSense is not hiding anything it surely is not providing useful data on how to best optimize the resource as it is currently offered.

Now to the important part will it work for you? The only way to know is to try it for yourself. Do I think it can be a good program? Absolutely, we are a graphics driven society, television, video games and, yes, even computers. Can the service be improved, definitely and it would be nice to see some of these spify new player options come out that they had talked about so highly in the YouTube startup videos.

Maybe I am being too harsh or expecting too much from them. Some of these problems may be due to the organizational structure of the program, you know, too many cooks in the kitchen. One side trying to do one thing and another doing something else and no one really sure of where it is all supposed to go. In any event, I have been happy with the results from adding my player to my site and I think the viewers get a kick from it too. I think for an international marketplace whenever we can see that we are all human and enjoy laughter and life and that we do not have to take life so seriously all the time... it may just bring us all a bit closer.

Being a new baby it certainly has its teething problems but I can say that when I had the videos disappear from my site after a few days from posting the player, I sent Google an e-mail and, they corrected the problem within 24 hours. That is great customer support now if we can just get a few of these other little issues cleaned up.

If I would give them a grade for the program I would have to give it a C. Does it work? Yes. Is it above the normal expectations for such a program? I don't think so. Having two internet powerhouses I would expect a bit more refinement without making it too difficult to understand or use. Provided that Google and YouTube will collectively work together to resolve some some of these points and make a good effort in more customization options for the players layout, it is my belief that this program will only grow into a much bigger and profitable program in the future.