iPhone and iPad owners who like to watch YouTube videos may soon have to deal with commercials. Apple said today that its license to carry the YouTube app has expired, which means it won’t come pre-loaded with iPhones and iPads. Not to worry: Google is developing a new YouTube app that will available in the App Store — and videos can still be viewed within the Safari browser. But the change could affect the mobile YouTube experience, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield says. He believes that in their original 2007 carriage deal, Apple agreed to give YouTube a prominent place on its devices’ home screens as long as Google didn’t include ads. “With consumers shifting to mobile devices at an increasingly rapid rate and Google investing serious dollars in higher quality programming for the YouTube platform…we believe Google could no longer allow its YouTube app on iPhones and iPads to go without advertising,” Greenfield says. Unlike other companies such as Facebook that are struggling to find a compelling way to integrate commercials and content on a mobile device, he adds that spots on YouTube should command “very compelling” prices.


I miss Steve Jobs. What’s going on with apple?
Steve Jobs was way more money hungry than the old guy. This has nothing to do with his death
*new guy
I hate the current YouTube app. It is slightly better than mobile YouTube so that is one thing keeping me on the iPhone. But hey if I have to watch ads for a better YouTube app experience I’m all for it.
The YouTube app is terrible and in case no one noticed, content restricted both in terms of search and video playback. As for YouTube itself, who really cares? It’s as passé as anything on the Internet can be and everything that made it a cool, usefull site has slowly but surely been stripped away either by Google or as a result of DMCA claims. I, like many used to visit it on a daily basis and yet now I find myself forgetting that it even exists.
Between the loss of content, ridiculously strict upload rules, DMCA idiots, spam videos, horrible user interface, download restrictions and site wide commercials all that’s left to do with YouTube is sit back and listen to the death bells toll.
Rich Greenfield is apparently a straight-up moron… Beware his analysis. How in the world would the dismal, third-rate content on youtube generate “very compelling” prices?
Waiting 30 seconds for an ad to end effectively kills the whole point of what was appealing about Youtube in the first place. It was a place to go for simple, short entertainments… Though I ignore all youtube links completely now, been there done that. Life’s too short for the BS most youtube referrals end up being. It might still be fun for fifth graders…