I have never uploaded a video to YouTube.  In fact, until last week I didn’t even own a video camera.

That all changed when HDD cameras came out and it was announced my wife was going to have a baby.  Since then I have been editing clips of Anne and Rad’s life “before” to juxtapose it to “after” our child is born.  I can’t wait to upload some of the footage to a private site whereby our friends and family spanning the globe will be able to see our kid currently known as The Nugget.

Being in the world of marketing, I have been tracking our field’s response to my pending action of uploading video content to the web.  The shifts from analogue to digital, from Television to Web, and specifically the shift from corporate content (CC) to consumer-generated content (CGC) are all fascinating to me. 

YouTube is at the forefront of this shift from CC to CGC.  Of all the sites I could choose to upload my footage, this is the most likely if for no other reason than everybody knows about it and it wouldn’t take long for my friends/family to find my footage.

However, I’m very suspect at the success Google hopes to garner from trying to monetize the YouTube experience.  I can understand why they hope to do this; after all, they spent enough to purhcase it and the company must now show investors a return.  But I don’t think people really understand the degree to which people will backlash against the very idea of adding advertising to CGC content.

I can’t show you the data as its proprietery, but Forrester research did a great study on the different types of digital ”content” being uploaded to the web last year.  Their suggestions were not concrete, but they did make it very clear that CC and CGC should remain separated so as to help people in the search process (the search process of online video being a major hurdle nobody has yet overcome).  To this end, any major investor in online video content, including Google and YouTube, should consider separating CC from CGC even if it requires separate sites.

The going prediction is that this is the year for a backlash against YouTube as Google insists the URL can accomodate a blend of CC, CGC, and imbedded advertising in both - essentially being everything to everybody. 

I adhere to this prediction as those who add video content to YouTube have invested a lot of emotional energy into their work.  Any efforts by Google to tarnish their work by imbedding advertising in it will result in an emotional backlash followed by a move to a video content provider that does not require such embedded commercialization.

Stepping back for a minute, we still don’t know how Google is going to insert ads into YouTube content.  The latest news flowing throught the blogosphere is that they have ruled out front-end and back-end ads (as they are always ignored) and have decided to plug ads that run underneath the video content:

Google has also thrown out the idea that the ads in CGC content will be designed so that the owner of the footage will receive a percentage of the ad sales, thus turning any good CGC provider into a traditional broadcaster with ad revenue supporting his/her endeavors.

Again, I just don’t buy it.  I honestly don’t think the majority of those who are uploading CGC are interested in whoring themselves by adding adverts to the bottom of their footage.  Just look at the success of the buzz agent as an example of how people, when given the option to get paid for their creativity and opinion, will choose to do it for free rather than work within a monetized system.  Yes, buzz agent companies claim they have thousands of people just waiting to increase a compay’s WOMM, but the whole system wreaks of a fundamental misunderstanding as to how companies should involve themselves in new media.

Now I usually don’t go off on a rant like this unless I have a solution for the problem I pose.  What I believe to be the solution for those who wish to monotize the online video experience is what those crazy Dutch are doing with Joost.

The brilliance of Joost is that the realize that a blend of CC, CGC, and advertising can be achieved so long as the CGC is separate from the commercialization.  In a nutshell, what Joost proposes is programing available anytime, anywhere.  More importantly, they propose a system whereby multimple people can watch a show from their respective computers and hold an online chat simultaneously.  Brilliant!

This is CC and advertising blended with online community and customer control.  This is the proper blend of CC and CGC (CGC in this case being and online discussion instead of video content bastardized by overlaid ads).  People will be fine with the idea that corporate America owns the rights to the (professionally produced) content and ad rights so long as the conversation  about the content (another form of CGC) is left to consumers.

Looking back at the YouTube model, I think Google should think twice about messing with it.  What they should be doing is working to build a Joost competitor, working with CC to upload content with ads, and providing tools for viewers to share and watch the content in group settings (CGC).  Trying to blend CC, CGC, and advertising in the way they propose will lead many, including me, to one of YouTube’s many competitors that won’t make me upload my child with a banner ad attached to his forehead.