YouTube Launches In-video Ad Program

YouTube entered the commercial age on Wednesday by adding in-video advertisements to some of the offerings on its Web site. Instead of the lead-in videos that other sites use, however, YouTube will offer semi-transparent overlays that appear at the bottom of videos, according to MediaPost.

The overlays will fill the bottom 20 percent of the video player window, and will appear for about ten seconds after a video begins playing. Users can click the overlays to see full ads, and will be returned to the original video they were watching once the ad finishes running. If users donit click the ads, they fade away.

The ads wonit appear on all videos, but they will be available for both commercial and user-generated content.