Online video leader YouTube has opened up its version of a home shopping network in its latest effort to wring more revenue from its massive audience and justify the $1.76 billion that Google Inc. paid for the site two years ago. In the new service, unveiled Tuesday in the United States, there will be buttons under YouTube videos to offer viewers a chance to buy music, movies, TV shows, concert tickets and other products featured or mentioned in a particular clip.
When one of the links is clicked, the YouTube viewer is taken to another Web site like Amazon.com or iTunes that’s selling a desired song or other product. YouTube will receive a commission for each completed sale.
For starters, YouTube is selling songs only from two major labels, EMI Music and Universal Music Group, and video games made by Electronic Arts Inc. But it hopes to persuade studios to peddle movies and TV shows alongside video clips.
Eventuall y, YouTube wants to expand beyond entertainment sales to create a shopping bazaar. For instance, a home-care how-to clip on YouTube might include a sales button for a lawn mower.
“This is just the first step in this adventure,” said Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube’s director of product management.
YouTube plans to expand the sales channel outside the United States, but didn’t specify a timetable for the international expansion.
The “click-to-buy” links are part of YouTube’s intensifying focus on figuring out how to profit from its popularity without alienating an audience accustomed to watching clips without the commercial interruptions that fill television airwaves. YouTube also has had to navigate thorny copyright issues that have restricted its ability to show ads.
YouTube has only had moderate success with ads so far, mostly with short commercials that appear in a small frame underneath the main video. Its revenue this year is expected to hover around $ 200 million – an amount that has been somewhat disappointing to industry analysts, given that the site attracts nearly 100 million people each month in the United States alone.
Google has been patient with YouTube, telling its shareholders that it’s more important to nurture the video site’s audience than to fret about financial targets.
YouTube has succeeded on that front. In July, the site served up about 5 billion videos in the United States, according to the latest data from comScore Inc. That was 10 times more than the runner-up, News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media, a group that includes the online hangout MySpace, which also has started to sell songs in a joint venture with major record labels.
Google hasn’t felt pressured to reap a quick return from YouTube because its main business of selling text-based ads alongside search results and other Web content is thriving, with revenue expected to surpass $20 billion this year.
Still, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has been promising YouTube will become a huge moneymaker once it finds the right advertising formula. He has gone as far as to suggest the perfect commercial approach at YouTube is “the holy grail.”
Besides introducing a platform for e-commerce, YouTube also formally announced a new player, called “Theater View,” for watching full-length videos. The new player, which began appearing on YouTube last month, looks more like a small movie screen with stage curtains on the sides. It can even be dimmed to simulate a movie theater.
The Oscars Are More International Than Ever. But Is The International Film Category Broken?
For many filmmakers, the Oscars are a pipe dream. But not because they think their movies aren't good enough.
The Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, for instance, knew his native country was more likely to jail him than submit his film for the Academy Awards. Iran, like some other countries including Russia, has an official government body that selects its Oscar submission. For a filmmaker like Rasoulof, who has brazenly tested his country's censorship restrictions, that made the Oscars out of the question.
"A lot of independent filmmakers in Iran think that we would never be able to make it to the Oscars," Rasoulof said in an interview through an interpreter. "The Oscars were never part of my imagination because I was always at war with the Iranian government."
Unlike other categories at the Academy Awards, the initial selection for the best international film category is outsourced. Individual countries make their submission, one movie per country.
Sometimes that's an easy call. When the category — then "best foreign language film" — was established, it would have been hard to quibble with Italy's pick: Federico Fellini's "La Strada," the category's first winner in 1957.
But, often, there's great debate about which movie a country ought to submit — especially when undemocratic governments do the selecting. Rasoulof's fellow Iranian New Wave director Jafar Panahi likewise had no hopes of Iran selecting his 2022 film "No Bears" for the Oscars. At the time, Panahi was imprisoned by Iran, which didn't release him until he went on a hunger strike.
Rasoulof's film, "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" — a movie shot clandestinely in Iran before its director and cast fled the country — ultimately was nominated for best... Read More