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Launched late last year, YouTube’s Promoted Videos program allows publishers to place bids for keywords in order to achieve placement on relevant YouTube search results pages, similar to Google’s auction mechanism for publishers via AdWords.

Until now, the Promoted Videos only showed up alongside those search results as well as periodically on the YouTube homepage. But YouTube just closed the loop by adding Promoted Videos to related partner watch pages in the Related Videos section, adding an AdSense analogy to the revenue-sharing equation.

With the new change, now Promoted Videos are contextually matched to YouTube partner watch pages (simply YouTube’s term for an individual video’s page) based on the content of the video and text on the page, giving publishers an extra promotional boost on video pages that are naturally related to the audience’s interest. 

The new system also shares with AdSense its revenue-sharing power: both the publisher of the Promoted Video and the partner whose page it appears on will share a cut of the advertising money with YouTube. The net effect is to make the Promoted Videos program more effective overall by making its videos visible not just on active search results pages but on passively related partner pages as well.

The Promoted Videos show up in the Related Videos column in the right sidebar, clearly delineated with a yellow background and a text tag. It’s a relatively small change with big implications for publishers making use of the Promoted Videos program, who will now benefit from the increased exposure to their videos. Other YouTube partners benefit as well, by getting a cut of the revenue from the Promoted Videos featured on their watch pages.

Tags: advertising, promoted videos, Revenue, video, youtube