YouTube inks game link deal

YouTube will start ‘selling’ games via links from its popular video game-relevant videos to online stores.

The Google-owned site will split revenue with the likes Amazon and iTunes on sales of music, films, TV shows, video games, books, concert tickets and other media-related products that are bought by those following links from relevant videos it hosts.

The move is described by Reuters as an "experiment with new advertising formats to grow revenue" that pushes beyond the usual Google AdSense links (a service which was also
today confirmed to be targetting the games space).

Until now the firm relied on just the advertising around its videos to make money.

"There’ll be lots of different solutions for lots of different problems," said Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube director of product management. "We’ve tested a lot of things already, and we’re going to be testing more in the future. Some will work, some won’t."

Google said it would be experimenting with a number of different types of advertising such as different forms of video ads, to make the deals work.