Google has recruited roughly 100 YouTube publisher partners to help transform its AdSense network into a content distribution network.
As such, publishers who use Google's AdSense
network to monetize their sites can now host ad-supported video players featuring content from the likes of TV Guide Broadband, Expert Village, and Ford Models.
AdSense publishers can host
content by a particular provider or by a content category such as autos, how-to, or music. Google then shares the ad revenue with the video publishers along with the site hosting the video.
Similarly, Google earlier this year embarked on a four-week test with several large content companies--including Dow Jones & Company, Condé Nast, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, to syndicate
their video content on other Web sites.
Google's network promises more visibility to content publishers facing an increasingly fragmented audience online. Along with Google, nearly every Web
portal--together with a pack of ad networks and video distribution sites--is offering publishers the same promise.
The rollout is part of a larger strategy by Google to branch out beyond
text-based advertising into premium display advertising. And Google's AdSense network is capable of distributing for more than just video, according to Nikhil Chandhok, a product manager at
YouTube.
"Whatever publishers want, we can syndicate of the AdSense network," Chandhok said.
Along with other types of content, Google is working to expand the breadth of video content it
offers into ever more refined niche categories, according to Chandhok.