Google is still struggling to make advertising revenues from YouTube resemble the site's popularity, the Wall Street Journal reports, with big industry heavyweights still leery about placing their ads alongside amateur video. With a well-below-expectation $200 million in ad revenue forecast this year, it's obvious "most advertisers are still testing the waters on YouTube," one exec said.
That stumbling block is among several slowing the process. Copyright-infringement lawsuits remain pending, and one Google exec has found such a mountain of inefficiencies in its sales chain he calls efforts to unravel them "Project Spaghetti." Still, given Google's stranglehold on search advertising, clients are ready to jump on board: "As they get their platform ready for other media, we will get there with them," a GM exec said. (More Google stories.)