It's about time Google did something with YouTube

Today, Google announced that it would be combining YouTube with its AdSense platform so that subscribers can syndicate ad-supported YouTube videos on their Web sites.

Subscribers that choose to add the videos to their sites just paste in some Google-given code, and voila, the videos appear, complete with their own players. The videos themselves won’t be preceded by an unskippable ad; the ads will appear surrounding the videos, as part of the accompanying player. And Web sites who sign up for the service can request the sorts of videos they want to appear on their site: a site selling dog-breeding services might get adorable videos of playing puppies, for example.

 So far, this is a game of pros, with TV Guide, Expert Village, Ford Models, Mondo Media and Extreme Elements among the more than 100 video providers who have already signed on, according to the Associated Press and the New York Times. Just as it does with the text-based ads in AdSense, Google will share the revenue with video providers. The company generally doesn’t reveal the split, but it’s typically between 60 and 80%, again according to AP.

The net of this is that while the guys at Google got very rich selling simple text-based ads that pop up whenever you do an online search, combining advertising with video is much more powerful. This 1.0 version with graphics running across the bottom of a player is probably not the best, most appealing, most sticky way to do this, but this is just the beginning. Having the ability to push out a relevant video ad to millions and millions of Web sites just has dollar signs flashing before my eyes. This is one of the many times every week when I wonder why I’m in journalism and not software, other than the fact that I can’t do math.

My main question is ‘what took them so long?’ Google acquired YouTube last November in a $1.76 billion deal. What we’ve seen from that combo since has been very little, although things are starting to ramp up. So I predict there’s more big news coming right down the pike from the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant.

Wall Street analysts seem to agree with me on this one: Google’s pricey stock moved up $5.57 to $615.18 per share today, and Lehman Brothers’ Dough Anmuth (yes, there’s a Wall Street analyst named Dough apparently. Do you think he changed his name when he got the job?) boosted his Google target to $714 from $610.