Ad:Tech -- YouTube to be Thoughtful About Ads this Summer

As part of the “Content is King (Again)” round table style keynote at ad:tech this morning, among the debate over distribution, digital rights management and the role of aggregators and other topics, this question was raised: When is YouTube finally going to start monetizing its content?

Suzie Reider, the head of advertising sales for YouTube, was cagey and cautious about answering, but admitted that the video-sharing site was experimenting with how to best place ads with its content and that “this summer we should be ready, but we’re not in a rush.”

“We are doing what any thoughtful companies would do and approach this from a thoughtful way and think about what are the ad methods that will work,” Reider said.

She said that YouTube is experimenting with running quick introductions that would precede the content, and another commercial after the content, but they want to be careful to avoid disrupting the user experience for viewers.

“I don’t think that a :15 or :30 pre roll before a :27 piece of user-generated content is going to be a great experience,” she said. “A user’s experience in YouTube right now is so pure we don’t want to get in the way of that.”

Which begs the question, does YouTube want to have its cake and eat it too? To attach ads to videos without adding disruption? Stay tuned.