• by Tanya Gazdik , March 27, 2008

YouTube will formally announce today a new tool on the site that will allow advertisers to better target their buys.

The free software application, called YouTube Insight, was already up and running on the site Wednesday night.

Marketers who buy ads on YouTube already get statistics about the performance of their ads. The new program breaks down viewership by day and shows the states or countries where most viewers are. Geographic information is based on viewers' numeric Internet Protocol address, the same mechanism Google uses to target ads by region. All video producers will get access to stats dating back to Nov. 1, 2007.

In coming weeks, YouTube also plans to introduce a feature that shows how people come to watch different clips, whether through a search engine, a related video or a link on another Web site. Until now, YouTube has published only statistics about the total number of views, and the comments or ratings a video received.

"With this information, you can concentrate on creating compelling new content that appeals to your target audiences and post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site," YouTube officials said in a blog entry announcing the program.

Video creators can use the information for figuring out how to make money from advertising sold alongside videos. Advertisers can use the tools to receive some basic measures of which sorts of videos they might run ads against, prospect for new marketing opportunities, and determine what return on their investments they receive.

"Whether a YouTube video has 10 views or 10 million, people always want to know the same thing: Who's watching this? Where do viewers come from? How did they find my video?," YouTube said in a blog post.

The launch comes as Google looks for ways to make money off its $1.76 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006.

YouTube had 269 million monthly visitors worldwide in February, up 84% from the same month a year ago, according to Web traffic measurement firm comScore.