Chris Meller

Every time I see a YouTube video that’s circulating the ‘net, I always wonder… How do they ever plan to make money?

Advertising? I don’t see how that would ever effectively work… When was the last time you actually visited the YouTube site to watch a video? Everything I ever watch has been embedded in another webpage… I would never see any traditional form of advertising on their website, because I’m never there.

The only possible way I could see for them to ever integrate advertising would be to include it at the beginning (let’s face it, the end would just never work) of actual videos - or to force visitors to their website (by restricting off-site videos to crappy quality, or some type of ‘preview’ mode). Either way, I don’t think it would go over well with their target audience - an audience typically heavily anti-intrusive-advertising.

I don’t make it a habit of keeping up with these “Web 2.0” companies on a regular basis these days, but can anyone tell me how any of these (similar) services are supposed to make a buck? Obviously they’ve been able to convince some big-money VCs that they can, I’m just still not seeing it…