YouTube Offers Millions Of Dollars In Ad Discounts To Attract New Advertisers

The minimum bid for a YouTube advertising package dropped from more than $10 million to just $1 million in an attempt to ad steal dollars from television budgets, AdAge reports.

Ads on YouTube, those sponsored clips that play before you get to watch most videos, have typically posed huge up-front costs to advertisers vying for the space.

While advertisers used to spend eight-figures on Original Channel advertising packages for specific genres — Ad Age notes that one music package for space before high-profile music videos sold for $62 million — they now only have to shell out a fraction of the price.

"Last year we were rigid," YouTube sales chief Lucas Watson said. "We got a few big advertisers with huge checks." Now, he says, YouTube is breaking ad packages down into "more manageable chunks."

This will open the ad medium to a wider variety of advertisers. Companies that have previously advertised only on TV might soon expand to YouTube.