CondéNet Video Channels to Appear on YouTube

CondéNet, a digital arm of Condé Nast Publications, is aggressively pursuing partnerships with new media organizations. Among the strategies is to create a number of video channels on YouTube.

Initial channels include videos from CondéNet’s Epicurious.com cooking site. Future YouTube channels will feature video from other CondéNet properties, including Style.com, Men.Style.com, Concierge.com, and Wired.com.

CondéNet will sell advertising on the branded YouTube channels, but it also hopes the initiatives will spread its brand awareness, said Richard Glosser, CondéNet’s executive director of emerging media . “It’s kind of exciting for us to be exposing our content, our brand, to the YouTube audience,” he said. “From a marketing perspective, we have a great brand called Epicurious. It is very focused, in a very targeted way, on people who love to eat. Now, we get to broaden that focus on the YouTube audience.”

Glosser said leftover inventory will be filled by YouTube’s advertising system.

Glosser noted YouTube is increasingly “embracing original, professionally-produced content” similar to that created by CondéNet. “As part of that, YouTube has been a real leader in figuring out and innovating different advertising formats,” he said. “We are working with them to sell advertising with our content.”

Glosser indicated YouTube recently announced a new overlay-based ad unit in which a transparent clip runs about 15 seconds into the playing of a video. When a viewer clicks the ad, it begins playing in a size slightly smaller than the YouTube player. Glosser said the new unit is “a very interesting opportunity to evolve the video advertising” on YouTube.

He declined to name advertisers who have purchased ads for the new YouTube channels. “It just launched,” Glosser explained. “We are out in the market. It’s so new we are still educating our advertisers. The good news is there’s been a lot of interest. People are really interested in this whole multi-platform thing.”

“What we are doing is offering our advertisers an ability not only to reach the audience of Epicurious, Style, Men’s Style, Concierge or Wired but also to be able to follow our content through all these very different platforms and create kind of a whole syndication network,” he said. “We are very interested in the business perspective of exposing our videos to people beyond our own sites to drive traffic, recieve branding and drive more revenue.”

Earlier this month, CondéNet became one of the first companies to sign up for the new Facebook Social Ads program. In October, it joined a small group of publishers creating Internet TV shows for Sony Bravia hi-definition televisions.