With YouTube adding click-to-buy links within it’s site, the first thing I thought of was that companies or their affiliates could make a lot of money with it. Well, who knows if it would be a lot, but at least some. It seems other news sources are thinking the same thing.
ClickZ and Search Engine Watch both reported that Google will now allow “click to Buy” advertisements so that users can purchase products based on the videos they see. So far, from the linked video it looks like it’s either Linkshare and Amazon affiliates doing the linking or maybe EMI is just using affiliate URLs to make tracking easier. Either way, it looks like there is a lot of potential for this.
The most obvious is already being noted, for songs that people are listening to or for movie previews that people watch, there could be a link to buy that song or movie directly from YouTube. Another, less obvious of this would for content producers. Depending on the structure of how the links are added, someone who is willing to take the time to produce a video demonstrating how the product is used or even just having a video review of the product could go ahead and add links for the user to buy the product from Amazon or another online retailer. While not everyone who is watching some crazy soccer tricks will go and buy a soccer ball, somebody watching a review of one the best TV’s on the market will be more closer to the purchasing part of the buying cycle.
Related posts
