Google’s YouTube arm is going to begin working with major news publications to pilot a new form of video player through their online publication websites, which would allow publishers and news outlets to gain ad revenue from their own advertisements and content but without losing some of that ad revenue to Google. This would make it so that all ad revenue would be looped back to the publication completely, but the new system will also allow those publishers to fill in advertisement gaps with Google’s ads where they’re needed if specific publishers aren’t able to use their own advertisements from time to time.
Google’s “YouTube Embedded Player Pilot” is still in the beginning phases of testing so they are only working closely with specific publishers at the moment, but eventually other news outlets will be able to sign up for using the new player if they want to opt in and use it instead of their own hosted video players. Where Facebook has already snagged the usership for its video platform of a number of news publishers, YouTube’s pilot program is an attempt to grab some of those publications and convince them to switch services, which may prove to be an easy process due to the fact that YouTube pays those publications, where Facebook does not. The whole process is still uncertain as the YouTube team has plenty to work out before things are set in stone.
Sometime around the first half of 2016 is when Google expects to open up the pilot and seek more partners for a broader scope of testers, and moving into the second half of 2016 Google expects to open up the player program to even more publications, citing partners like The Guardian, El Pais, La Stampa and more. With it still being in such early development, quite a few factors are in flux and subject to change by the time the new player is rolled out completely, including the design and function, formats for advertisements and data, as well as how the player suggests new videos to viewers after having finished watching content, and how much control editorial staff will have over the content as a whole.