The trouble with YouTube: Even as advertisers evaluate these new ideas, however, YouTube and the other video-sharing sites face other difficulties. For one thing, they are in a no-man's land of copyright law: they promise to pull pirated content from their sites when asked to do so, but it is only a matter of time before one of them is hit with a big lawsuit. Then there are the costs of running such a site?video requires a lot of bandwidth and storage. A rival estimates that YouTube is losing more than $500,000 a month.
YouTube IPO Soon? Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal reported that YouTube hired Yahoo's Treasurer, Gideon Yu, to take the role as the CFO. No doubt this is a critical role for a high-flier IPO.
Media firm moves advertising cash to video-sharing sites: The issue, however, is finding a viable financial model for the sort of viral marketing programmes that can take off on YouTube as users email videos to their friends. "It is easy to spend $20,000 doing a little video to put on YouTube," said Mr Lerwill, "But if it then becomes the most viralled video on the internet, how do we keep a percentage of the value we have created for the advertiser?"
The migration of advertising spending online is a challenge for television and radio firms who need to become smarter to attract cash. One way is to shorten the time it takes to put adverts on air, allowing advertisers to react to specific events such as a wet Bank Holiday weekend.
