A search insider was telling me that they he’s now confident Google is actively hiring “mission critical” search people solely to thwart the competition. Simply looking at the list of key moves over the past year supports this idea to some extent.

Also, consider the fact that this YouTube team beat the pants off Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Don’t you think you’d want to hire these guys? How much are the people themselves worth? Maybe Google’s looking for some fresh ideas since they’re primarily succeeding in monetizing search and selling ads on other properties. Are they really simply an advertising company that happens to have some other cool software services/products?

Now, if they can continue to grow the YouTube community and can build more awareness for the Google brand, perhaps they can convince YouTube users to use other Google products. If that’s the case, they’ll earn money on ad revenue beyond the YouTube platform they’re buying. Perhaps it’s that potential that explains the premium.

Also, check out JenSense.com – she’s got some ideas for how Google will monetize the YouTube traffic.

I referenced both your argument’s in a post on my blog, titled “Is YouTube cheap at only 330 minutes of Super Bowl ad time?” –

http://zenrob.typepad.com/zenrob/2006/10/is_youtube_chea.html

“So putting some structure around the rhetorical question Scoble asks – would you rather buy out the next 11 Super Bowl’s ad inventory, or would you rather own a technology platform/community that could generate the same reach (sort of – actually only 1/5 the reach, but assuming you hit them 5x as long) over 1200 days?”

Nope, an average Superbowl ad is not worth it, let alone an average TV ad campaign. I think the TV advertising emperor has few clothes and I think YouTube may be the vehicle that brings this to light over the coming years.

There are exceptions like Godaddy who got tons of extra publicity for the superbowl ads but I’d argue that TV ads have, on average, terrible ROI and that will become clearer as metrics improve. Too much ROI research is now done by vested interests.

But at 1.65 billion the issue isn’t “big bucks”, it’s humongously gigantic bucks. Think about it – how much would it be worth for ScobleShow (where the match with YouTube is favorable), to advertise there?

I bet the ROI will be way negative even though you can probably cut a good deal.

Hey – if I can blog and analyze the experiment I’ll help pay for it..

It’s pretty interesting that you and Don don’t think there’s big bucks here. Tell me, is the $3 million for a minute of Superbowl ad time worth it? If so, why wouldn’t it be worth doing video advertising on YouTube?