• VNUnet.com, Tuesday, April 24, 2007 10:45 AM

Is this an about-face from GoogTube? Google is said to be teaming up with broadcasters and other content to create 30-second pre-roll video ads that would appear before video clips on YouTube. If memory serves, CEO Chad Hurley and once said, and Google execs have hinted in the past, that pre-rolls would not be the way forward for the online video-sharing site.

Apparently, Patrick Walker, Europe's head of video partnerships at Google, told delegates at the MipTV conference in Cannes that broadcasters have been "enthusiastic" about the new ad plan, predicting that 2008 will see "real money coming in" from YouTube. Meanwhile, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been sounding diplomatic in recent public appearances, unveiling plans for the copyright detection system content owners have wanted. Perhaps he's realized that it's time for Google to extend an olive branch to content owners.

If that's true, the about-face comes from broadcasters' pressuring Google into doing things their way. Google thought it had the upper-hand in negotiations with content providers when it acquired YouTube last fall, but in recent months that has not proved to be the case. Big media firms have upped their efforts to get their copyrighted content off the site, while pursuing their own endeavors. Viacom may have kicked it all off by turning its back on YouTube first, and then suing it for $1 billion in lost revenue.

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