YouTube announced a new ad product called Buzz Targeting. It uses an algorithm to allow advertisers to target "about-to-go-viral videos," and it's the ad product Google CEO Eric Schmidt gushed about during an interview with CNBC last month when he said: "We believe the best [YouTube] products are coming out this year. And they're new products — much more participative, much more creative, much more interesting in and of themselves." One problem:
advertisers can't use Buzz Targeting to serve ads against popular videos uploaded by regular YouTube users, only those uploaded by "content partners" — probably because regular users often don't own the copyright to the videos they upload and it's hard for Google's lawyers to justify YouTube making money off those.
