October 10 2008

YouTube adds 'click to buy' ecommerce

The video-sharing behemoth and 'future of television' is to offer viewers the chance to buy products featured in YouTube videos. Could this be the future of rich media marketing?

YouTube has started adding 'click to buy' links to music videos owned by its partners in the US.

These links will allow users to buy related content, such as the music or a video game featured in the clip, from iTunes and Amazon.com by simply clicking on a button that appears below the viewing window.

The announcement on YouTube's US blog says:

This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable eCommerce platform for users and partners on YouTube. Our vision is to help partners across all industries — from music, to film, to print, to TV — offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos.

Presumably it is just a matter of time before the system is extended outside audiovisual products and into clothing, household goods and more. YouTube will take a commission on each sale, and plans to extend the system outside the US and into other industries:

These retail links are being gradually added to our library of music videos and are currently only available to users in the United States, but our goal is to slowly but surely expand the program to additional content and product partners, as well as our international users.

Another advantage of the service for YouTube is that content owners will also be able to 'claim' user-submitted videos and add click-to-buy links to them. So this service looks like it might also be a tactic to stem the torrent of takedown notices and give content owners a reason to leave infringing material — say a user video that uses a commercial soundtrack — available on the site.

by Sarah Clark (Web Editor)