YouTube Roars With Lionsgate Deal

The video sharing site picked up an agreement with the film studio to distribute its movie and TV clips, and share ad revenue.

It’s a little deal in terms of the Lionsgate content being made available on YouTube. Shorter clips, rather than full length features and shows, will make up the proposed Lionsgate channel.

Buzz about the arrangement began at the Madison & Vine Conference in Los Angeles, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned the deal, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“You can take the strategy of fighting an endless war of trying to take down and resist YouTube or you can take the strategy of embracing the fact people seem to want to watch content in this way,” Curt Marvis, president of digital media at Lionsgate, said in the report.

Monetizing the relationship offers some potential stumbling blocks. The type of advertising to be used may be of the pre-roll variety, rather than some of the newer formats for displaying ads on video content.

Wired said pre-roll ads make advertisers happy, even though viewers hate them. But other models YouTube could use, like inline and overlay ads, apparently do not perform as well for advertisers.

Since both YouTube and Lionsgate want to make money, we’re expecting a healthy dose of pre-roll ads once they stock the channel and open it to visitors.