• PBS.org, Friday, December 15, 2006 11 AM

How do videos end up on YouTube's home page? Sometimes movie marketers can buy home page placements for their trailers, but it's been a mystery how YouTube decides what deserves front-page treatment.

Mark Glaser of PBS.org writes of a struggling stand-up comic whose work appeared on the home page one day. As a result, his video shot up to 750,000 views, and he got hundreds of new subscribers to his YouTube channel. Did he contacted YouTube or paid for his slot? No, and neither did other front-page successes.

Jennifer Nielsen, a marketing manager at YouTube, says that Featured Videos are never paid slots, though they are editorially chosen. Director Videos may be paid for because they come from YouTube's media and director partner; the latter is free to sign up for. She says the Active Video and Active Channel areas are randomly chosen by the system.

For "Featured Videos," the editors solicit suggestions at editor@youtube.com, and the editors say they go through everything. That means that advertisers can send their videos to the editors, and if they're good enough, they might wind up on the home page for free. That said, it's still rather opaque as to exactly what "Active Videos" "Active Channels" and "Director Videos" actually mean. YouTube could stand to explain this to the rest of us.

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