Project Spaghetti: YouTube might introduce pre-roll ads

Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor in Chief of Internet at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. He a (show all) Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor in Chief of Internet at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. He also served as The Next Web’s blog’s first blogger and Editor in Chief, back in 2008. At De Correspondent, Ernst-Jan serves as publisher, fostering the expansion of the platform.

Wall Street Journal has an important web story today, as they’ve found two sources willing to talk a bit about YouTube’s advertisement plans. YouTube only makes $200 million a year with advertising. Yes, “only”, as you might expect a video service with over a billion video views each day to come up with a little more ad revenue. This gets the executives at Google a bit nervous, as they still have to justify the 1.65 billion acquisition. Therefor, they’re thinking of drastic measures – like pre-roll ads all over the place.

One of the – unfortunately anonymous – sources said that a review executed by Google North America advertising president Tim Armstrong had identified an impressive number of 105 problems within the ad-selling division. This review is part of Project Spaghetti, a nickname for the extensive evaluation of the YouTube advertisement plan that will end before or during Q3. Although Armstrong seems worried about offending the audience of YouTube, he WILL adopt pre- and post-rolls. At least, that’s what the secret sources say.

This probably will alienate some of the YouTube users, but most people will just take it for granted. There are ads on TV too.. And this group gets more important, as they’ll become more profitable for Google. So the increasing revenues will make up for the few thousand people that find a different video home.