The longstanding YouTube mobile monetization drought is over.
Effective immediately, YouTube content creators will be able to make money off mobile views. The company announced today that it has launched TrueView in-stream video ads on all mobile devices.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” YouTube group product manager Phil Farhi wrote on the site’s YouTube Creator blog. “More and more traffic is coming from people watching video on smartphones and tablets. People are watching video when out with friends, while waiting in line, or on the bus home. Mobile growth on YouTube has been phenomenal.”
Farhi expects the mobile implementation of TrueView ads to give the site’s mobile interface a similar look and feel to the one you see when watching most videos on a laptop or desktop. In the case of TrueView, viewers that click to watch an ad-supported video will have the option to skip the ad if they aren’t interested after five seconds.
“Giving viewers choice over ads they watch has lead to a better, more engaged viewing experience, benefiting the entire YouTube community of users, partners, and advertisers.”
Viewers may not be so excited to see a new influx of ads to the videos they choose to watch, but it’s news to be heralded by content creators far and wide. Noted YouTube pundit William Hyde, who until just last week had run the preeminent YouTube News show, The Will of DC, called the development the “biggest news for YouTube ever!”
Others, like Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator tipster Howard Pinsky—whose IceflowStudios channel has over 184,000 subscribers—said that the implementation may have a greater effect on content creators than even YouTube could have predicted.
“Before monetization hit mobile videos, content creators like myself were hesitant to promote mobile videos in fear that revenue would go down,” he wrote to the Daily Dot. “Now that YouTube is rolling out mobile video ads, content creators may start to see an increase in revenue once advertisers start to cling onto the mobile revolution.”
Pinsky said that his mobile rich has risen 15 percent in the past two years, but that ascent can look deceiving.
“The 15 percent increase isn’t necessarily 15 percent more people watching my videos,’ he wrote. “From the research I’ve done, many users are simply switching over to their mobile device due to convenience.”
Convenience is rising faster than ever, and it’s finally named its price.
Photo via YouTube Creator
