Facebook has a long way to go before it becomes the world’s dominant video-sharing platform, but one area where it’s definitely beating YouTube is with news publishers. The social network is infinitely better at circulating news videos than YouTube, which is why so many publishers have started switching to it, but YouTube has a bold plan to win them back. With a new service called YouTube Embedded Player Pilot, the video-sharing service will give publishers tons of control over the videos they publish to YouTube, including the ability to sell their own ads on the embedded player.
Today after discussions with Digital News Initiative participants, Google announced at an event in Berlin that it’s working on a new product for news publishers to entice them to upload to its service directly. Called the YouTube Embedded Player Pilot, it’s a new service for news companies that allows more control over the YouTube player embedded on their own sites so they can build their own audiences and sell ads on original content. It gives news publishers full control over the embedded version of YouTube videos uploaded onto their own channels. Publishers will get control over the ads that are loaded, sales rights and revenue share. The rights on embedded players means they’re able to sell their own advertising without Google taking a cut, then backfill with Google’s advertising where needed. Google will work closely with publishers as part of this, providing best practices on how to use the player and what content to embed. The program is proposed to be a way to replace the in-house created video players often seen on sites like the BBC or The Guardian.
