It’s always been a huge bummer to find your favorite TV show episode on YouTube only to have the content police take it down within minutes. But now, in their scramble to increase ad revenues, YouTubehas the daggers out for sites like Hulu, NBC.com and ABC.com by offering full-length episodes of TV shows on the site.
They’ll start with shows from CBS, including The Young and the Restless, and the original 90210 and Showtime’s Dexter and Californication. YouTube said it is in discussions with other media partners, but declined to elaborate. According to the Wall Street Journal, they will sell commercial slots for advertisements sewn into the full-length shows.
More from the Wall Street Journal:
YouTube previously resisted selling this ad format because the Web site feared turning off viewers of its shorter clips. But marketers have been slow to warm to advertising adjacent to the usual user-created videos that make up a majority of the videos on YouTube; some larger advertisers say they would prefer to run their ads alongside more-predictable online video content.
