Google’s YouTube service is ready for a makeover and a new direction. Looking to turn its popularity into cash, the company decided to include in its offer full-length TV show episodes, enabling the use of commercials before, during and after the shows and also the ever-present banners.

So far, despite its huge worldwide popularity, YouTube did not prove itself as a significant money maker for Google or its investors, situation which attracted a lot of pressure on finding a rapid solution to this issue.

Through a deal with CBS, YouTube will feature full episodes of shows such as MacGyver, Beverly Hills 90210 and Star Trek, which will be available either in the well-known size or the new Theatre View format, specially designed for these long videos. Once users will select the option, the video will be spread horizontally, the rest of the screen will get darker and theatre curtains will be displayed on each side of the video.

A post included on YouTube’s official blog explained that the advertising "will only appear on premium content where you are most comfortable seeing such ads." Up until now the company’s officials stressed that introducing video adverts on a 60 second clip might push users away and such a move is exactly what they were planning and hoping for in order to start building collaborations and signing advertising deals.

For now, the service will only be available in the United States but YouTube’s Spokesman Aaron Zamost stated that the company hopes to make it available worldwide in the near future.

CBS’s content was first requested for online sharing by Hulu, a company owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. At the time the company considered that it would be far more profitable to offer the videos through its own Web site, as Hulu demanded 30 percent of the advertising revenues. The decision to keep it in the family was indeed considered a good one. It is still unclear what caused the strategy change but YouTube’s popularity and the prospect of having millions of new viewers might have had something to do with it.

YouTube has more than 300 million unique visitors each month, which translates into hundreds of millions of viewed videos each day. This year, the popular Web site recorded more than one third of all the Internet video watching traffic in the United States. Even though Hulu is focused on these full-length videos and registered the first breakthrough in this segment, its 3.3 million viewers are no match for YouTube’s huge potential.

Google is already looking to sign new deals with other TV networks, in an effort to enlarge its full-length archives. The strategy is clear: the bigger the selection, the more viewers log on and this attracts more advertisers.

"It's all about advertisers maximizing their reach and using the most effective ad format for where the user might be situated," said Shiva Rajaraman, a senior product manager for YouTube, as quoted by Reuters.