YouTube Monetizes Music Videos With In-Video Buy-Now Option For Apple’s iTunes

Today I was watching Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up video over at YouTube and guess what popped up:

So you were wondering how YouTube was going to monetize? Seems like iTunes integration is a sign of things to come. Think about it. If people are watching a YouTube video that’s associated with some product, it makes sense to give users the option of buying that product. Since many of the videos on YouTube are available for purchase at iTunes, this seems like a great partnership.

I imagine we’ll be seeing more partnerships like this from YouTube in the future. Imagine the option of buying the specific tools needed for a project from Amazon.com in a video about How To Install A Door Frame. Or, what about the option of immediately buying the exact product featured in a music video product placement.

In any case, the possibilities are limitless, and you could ask for a better compulsive buying scenario. It’s just like putting handbags, jewelry and shoes at the front of a Target store.

Note: My friend Andrew tells me that it looks like Google is auto-detecting the audio and that this is all automated.

Ryan Caldwell blogs his thoughts on culture and the Internet at Thrive and is a co-founder of Web Site Host Review.

29 thoughts on “YouTube Monetizes Music Videos With In-Video Buy-Now Option For Apple’s iTunes

  1. This is an effective way of getting purchases, I’ve bought more than a few after watching the video on youtube.

  2. Hoo so people can buy/download the video from youtube, lol because there are many youtube downloader tools outthere that we can use for free like keepvid or javimoya

    btw for who the money it is if someone buy the vid? for youtube or for the uploader? if for the uploader how they pay, is it by paypal?

  3. This is pretty old news but I think this was terrific. It increases the day-to-day spending to the musicians so we can keep getting more music!

  4. I may be dumb so please excuse me everyone: cud anyone here please explain the whole thing of “itunes integration with Youtube” thing to me? How are we, Youtube users, going to benefit? I don’t have anything to do with itunes because I am not a mac user, so that is why perhaps the whole thing seems vague to me. Youtube already offers audio+video, so what would this partnership with Itunes do at all? Just curious. Thanks.

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  5. Integration between iTunes and YouTube songs videos was a brilliant business idea. The advertising power of YouTube has been known for a long time and putting direct iTunes links in the clips seems to work great, especially since the release of the new generation of Apple’s iPods and iPhones that support both YouTube and iTunes. I’m sure it won’t be long before we see other major players in the online business integrate their services.

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  6. Couldn’t resist and saw the overlay when watching the video – amazing ad-matching technology, I’m sure they are going to list related songs to buy and songs by the same artist soon.

    Thats a great one. Enjoyed reading it thanks.

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  7. I don’t think it’ll rake in more money for them. Music piracy is number one issue. On top of that, there are a lots of video/audio grabbing tools on the net today. I doubt people will bother clicking on that ‘buy’ link on videos. Not unless of course, it’s a rare song they’ve been looking for.

  8. I am quite suprise to see how youtube make money , at first youtube encourage people to share video ,after traffic is huge , then they start thinking of how to make money of it. Good idea youtube

  9. Couldn’t resist and saw the overlay when watching the video – amazing ad-matching technology, I’m sure they are going to list related songs to buy and songs by the same artist soon.

  10. This is a great idea for Google/YouTube. I’m sure they were doing well with the small itunes/amazon images below the videos, but adding this feature inside the video is a great idea. We might even hear about them breaking even with bandwidth costs soon.

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