Advertising is beginning to pay off for Google’s YouTube, and it has now has served 500 million views of its paid Promoted Videos, a service it launched less than two years ago.
The news follows Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent hints that YouTube is “nearing profitability.”
Ads are becoming increasingly prevalent on the site, which is the fourth most popular destination on the Internet, attracting 90 million unique visitors each month, according to Google.
The company recently said that YouTube now monetises 2 billion views per week, which is about 15 percent of total views, but up 50 percent over last year.
Promoted Videos works by letting advertisers upload their video to YouTube and choose keywords they want to trigger a promotion.
This will enable the advertiser’s video to appear next to relevant search results. Advertisers only pay YouTube if a user clicks on their video.
Google claims it has “seen a more than six-fold increase in the number of times viewers have clicked to watch a Promoted Video.”
