Walt Disney and Google-owned YouTube have inked a deal yesterday under which the two will offer short-from content on the popular video-sharing site. 

 

Short-form content includes sports highlights from ESPN, TV shows from ABC and other content. Under the deal, Media Networks will decide if it wants to sell its own advertising inventory within those channels. It’s not much, but it’s a first big step made by YouTube towards becoming a source of professional-generated video content as well. 

 

Walt Disney believes the deal will get its advertisers to YouTube. 

 

"Ultimately it puts more content in front of our users that ABC and ESPN are able to monetize," said Jordan Hoffner, YouTube's director of content partnerships. "It's one of those where everyone wins."

 

Hoffner said the deal with Walt Disney is the result of months of work and is an important addition to the video sharing site’s library, that is mostly known for user-generated video content, which, although it does attract some traffic, it doesn’t generate that much revenue because it does not attract advertisers.

 

"Google has been trying for a long time to figure out how to get advertising into YouTube," said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with eMarketer, an Internet market researcher, according to The Los Angeles Times. "It's got so many users, but where's advertising? It's obviously been frustrating for Google."

 

It’s quite simple. The more professional-generated video content YouTube has in its library, the more advertisers it will attract. Under the recently-reached deal, the short-form video content can only be promotional, thus the number of advertisers will grow accordingly, but when a deal to offer full-length movies will be reached, maybe YouTube will not be a source of frustration for money-hungry Google. 

 

There are rumors that Disney plans to sign similar deals with Hulu, the online video service owned by News Corp and NBC Universal.