YouTube ramping up competition for advertisers

In a renewed effort to lure a bigger share of the advertising dollars that now flow to major TV networks, Google's YouTube is making a number of concessions long sought by marketers, ad executives say. Most prominently, in discussions ahead of this spring's TV ad-selling season, YouTube has told marketers it will offer audience guarantees to advertisers that make advance commitments, according to people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reports. YouTube will guarantee to air ads across its channels until they reach a certain percentage of the target audience that the marketer is trying to reach, according to several of the people. More