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YouTube adds Click-to-Buy

October 8, 2008 — 10:38am ET | By Pete Wylie

Tools

Google announced in a blog post entitled "I clicked to buy, and I liked it" that it has added a click-to-buy feature to YouTube's community features. When a user hears a song they like in a video or sees a video game demo that looks interesting, Google will provide links to Amazon.com or iTunes to enable a purchase.

Google is presently partnered with EMI Music, Amazon, and Electronic Arts in the project and said in the blog post that it wants to expand the program if initial feedback is positive.

"Our vision is to help partners across all industries -- from music, to film, to print, to TV -- offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos," the blog post said.

The large, targeted audience is certainly there on YouTube, and advertisers could benefit from the additional revenue generated by viewers of their videos making impulse purchases. Decreasing the time from interest generation to closing a sale is a big part of growing online economies.

YouTube also needs to diversify its revenue streams to justify Google's large investment.

For more:
- see the Google blog post here