Click to Buy on YouTube

Yes the day has finally come where Google has monetized YouTube videos themselves. Google officially announced today that it will be rolling out a campaign which will add a click-to-buy button to music videos and videos demonstrations of video games.

The strangest part of the announcement seemed buried in this one little sentence.

"And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site."

YouTube's Content Identification Management System allows owners of content to claim their right to it. The rights owner can choose to block it. However, they can now choose to monetize the video with these new links. Though you would have to have written a video game or a song on an album that Amazon is selling. Otherwise, you are out of luck.

On the other side, if the record companies claim the rights on YouTube to all of their music videos, when a user posts a video containing that content the record company can choose to add a link to sell the album. Pretty brilliant. However, Google really needs to tread lightly here since the more money changes hands, the more people want a piece of the action. For instance, they would have a big problem on their hands if a company selling whoopee cushions had a link on a Howard Stern video clip simply by tricking their Content ID System. Also, does the director of the music video get a cut? What about the blogger who post the video on his or her site? Hmmm....Stay tuned.