Google Inc., which has struggled for nearly three years to turn YouTube into an advertising platform, is aggressively pushing new ad formats and ramping up deals with media companies for the online video site.
YouTube said Wednesday it will distribute a range of short clips from Time Warner Inc. properties such as CNN and the Cartoon Network. The agreement follows similar deals struck with Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and ESPN and a number of Hollywood studios earlier this year.
Such content is one piece of YouTube's new money-making emphasis -- a sweeping effort the company has tapped Google veteran Salar Kamangar to oversee. More professional shows help it attract higher ad rates. But to get the content, YouTube has had to push a range of new ad products to generate enough revenue to share with partners.
YouTube has recently added larger ad formats, shown a greater variety of ads against user-uploaded content and promoted videos that draw higher ad rates more than other videos.
While YouTube continues to lose money, Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette recently told analysts he was "really pleased" with YouTube's revenue growth and said it will be profitable "in the not long, too long distant future." Some Wall Street analysts estimate YouTube's revenue will roughly double to about $500 million this year.
Many changes at YouTube have been spearheaded by Mr. Kamangar, who since September has jointly run the video site with its co-founder and CEO, Chad Hurley. YouTube's other co-founder, Steve Chen, left his role at the site to work on other Google projects around that time.
Mr. Kamangar, who joined Google in 1999 fresh out of Stanford University and helped build Google's AdWords search-ad system, has pressed YouTube to be more aggressive with online ads and advocated promoting more content from media companies on YouTube's homepage.
One of Mr. Kamangar's first priorities was moving more Google engineers to YouTube's offices in San Bruno, Calif., about 25 miles away from Google's headquarters in Mountain View. He completed the shift of YouTube's video-serving operations onto Google's infrastructure, reducing video-serving costs and allowing the site to roll out features faster.
In an interview, the soft-spoken 32-year-old said the push for new ad products is driven by YouTube's need to make more money for premium video creators, whose content is increasingly among the most popular on the site.
"We can't be successful unless our partners are successful and making money," said Mr. Kamangar, a Google vice president of product management, who has stayed out of the public spotlight.
Advertisers are noticing a difference. YouTube is "definitely being more creative," said Nick Bomersbach, vice president of e-commerce for J.C. Penney Co. The retailer is making YouTube "a much more important component of our marketing campaigns," he added, after a campaign it launched in July to promote its new clothing line from professional skateboarder Ryan Sheckler was more successful in directing traffic to the retailer's Web site than its previous YouTube campaigns.YouTube has mostly been a distraction since Google bought it for $1.7 billion in 2006. The Internet giant hasn't been able to turn a profit from the video site even though YouTube has grown into a massive destination, with 428 million unique monthly visitors in June, according to comScore.
As a result, YouTube has fueled doubts about whether Google can profit off anything other than search advertising, which generated the majority of its $21.8 billion in 2008 annual revenue.
YouTube has also embroiled Google in a legal battle with Viacom Inc., which sued in 2007, contending the video-sharing site violated its copyrights. Lawyers for both sides are currently building their cases and a trial date has yet to be set.
Last year, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt admitted that making money from YouTube was "taking longer than I thought."
Mr. Schmidt made turning around YouTube a company-wide goal and Mr. Kamangar was chosen to jointly run YouTube with Mr. Hurley.
Mr. Kamangar, who was among the first dozen people hired at Google, had most recently overseen Google Web applications, including Gmail and Picasa, Google's photo-sharing service.
Mr. Hurley, 32, credited Mr. Kamangar with improving YouTube's "focus and understanding" on "the advertising side," as well as smoothing communications with headquarters.
"We're going through the process of still learning the ins and outs [with Google], even though it has been two years, and he's helping us navigating the waters," said Mr. Hurley.
Mr. Kamangar has pushed YouTube staffers to take more risks. Last November, he overrode some executives' concerns about whether a feature that allowed people to watch video in high-definition was ready to launch. The feature went live three hours later.
This spring, after being told YouTube hadn't sold an ad on the home page for a few days, Mr. Kamangar advocated taking video ads that appeared on other areas of the site to fill that prominent space. Revenue from the home page increased, the company said.
