Gootube: Video Advertising Experiement

More Google Youtube speculation from Fortune Magazine:

"I don't know if they're right, but Google's managers now seem to believe they can do the same thing with print, radio and TV, albeit with much of the testing taking place on the more immediate and low-cost medium of the Internet. Buying YouTube will give Google a platform on which advertisers can experiment with TV ads in different forms.

If you were a big TV advertiser, before you spend what is sometimes millions for a primetime spot, wouldn't you like to know how it fared on YouTube compared to alternate versions? How many people willingly chose to view it? How many clicked through for more information? Did it perform better adjacent to some kinds of content than others? Presumably Google has a variety of ideas about how it could help advertisers evaluate TV ads online before placing them offline.

If Google can offer advertisers such tools to test the efficacy of offline ads, it could put them in a far better position to also assist in placing those ads. Google can buy ad inventory in TV, radio, and print to place ads there it pre-tested online. If it chose to, I suppose, it could even create its own offline media products on which to host such ads."