Tough nut to crack

YouTube content producers can now sell ad space across their own YouTube channels and videos — a new attempt by parent company Google to monetize the traffic-heavy site.

Content producers may sell display ads for video pages as well as video overlays. Revenue will be split between themselves and YouTube. Producer-based ad sales will not replace YouTube's existing sales efforts, which concentrate primarily on verticals and topic-based advertising.

Google acquired YouTube in late 2006. Since then it has had trouble monetizing the site, which is traffic-rich but apparently unamenable to existing ad formats.

Last month YouTube announced plans to sell ad space on videos that are expected to go viral. Days later, it launched age, sex and location-based ad targeting.

CEO Eric Schmidt stated that monetizing YouTube remains a company priority. He also said Google would continue to experiment with new formats until it finds the right mix.