In another move towards earning more revenue from its huge audience, YouTube has started streaming full-length TV shows that will include advertising. The content, which includes Star Trek, The Young & The Restless, and Beverley Hills 90210 comes through a deal with CBS. Advertising will include familiar formats like pre, mid, and post-roll.
For YouTube, the deal certainly marks further indication that the company is not having a great deal of success in monetizing the user-generated video that dominates the site. While the current lineup of content from CBS may not be especially impressive – no offense Y&R fans – it’s likely just the first of many deals that YouTube will make to bring more professionally produced content to its site that can be more easily monetized.
For CBS, the deal might be seen as yet another sign of a lack of confidence in Joost, the professional video content site where CBS is an investor. Meanwhile, CBS already offers full-length versions of many of its popular shows like CSI on its own website. Ultimately, it would look like YouTube is simply being viewed as another place to distribute content for the media company. CBS also recently did a deal with Slide to distribute video content through Facebook applications.
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