Can Google and YouTube Help Retailers Download Profits?

This week Google officially unveiled its latest strategy for turning a profit with its video mega monolith, YouTube. It’s a strategy that’s not only potentially explosive for the revenue-starved YouTube, it could be equally as explosive for revenue-starved retailers.

Now if you want your video to be seen by more people, YouTube will help you – for a price, of course. Just like you can pay to get your website to appear to Google searchers, you will now also be able to pay to get your videos to appear to YouTube searchers.

It’s mind-boggling to think what this might be able to do for retailers who have some kind of video to help them sell their stuff. While you can swing a herd of cats and not hit a shopper in the malls these days, more than 90 million people are wandering around YouTube every month. Matching retailers who have lots of stuff but no traffic with a website that has lots of traffic but nothing to sell seems so logical that you have to wonder why it took the highly inventive Googlers two years to come up with it. It’s the simple and obvious answers that elude us sometimes.

Consider the latest statistics. Ninety-two million people watch an average of 54.8 videos for a total of five billion video views, give or take a few hundred thousand. 75% of all Americans view at least one online video each month, and the average viewer spends almost six hours per month watching videos.

I have been involved in more than one discussion among baby boomers wondering who amongst us has 6 hours to spend trolling through home made video productions looking for… What exactly are these videophiles looking for? According to web analytics site Compete DataHub, YouTubers are looking for entertainment, laughs, diversion, and sex, not necessarily in that order.

This is good for retailers to know. If you want to try this new Google service to advertise your products via video, it might serve you best to have a video that is entertaining, funny, or sexy because that’s what YouTube viewers are conditioned to expect.

Will YouTube viewers buy your product if they like your video? If not, then there’s a whole bunch of people who have been wasting a whole bunch of time and money on SuperBowl advertising for a whole lot of years.

For retailers who have been meaning to get around to thinking about the possibility of maybe making a video some day, consider hiring a 19 year-old to do it rather than a big-time Madison Avenue advertising agency. If the Numa Numa guy, "Daft Hands," Paris Hilton XXX tape, and the Diet Coke-Mentos experiment have taught us anything, it’s that entertainment value and “keeping it real” trumps slick production in the wide world of online videos.

Whether you love Google, or fear its power and dominance, the retail world can’t help but root for the success in its pay-per-click video advertising scheme. A win for Google would signify that its sponsored search video advertisers are winning too. Right about now a win for the people who sell things would be a nice change of pace.