- if you want to move more traffic from non-monetizable areas to monetizable ones,
- if you want more marketers to embrace advertising on YouTube

then I think one thing you should do is remove links under Related Videos to non-partner videos.  On YouTube, all videos are linked to two groups of videos:

- videos that are produced or uploaded by the same user (marked with an $ in the image below),
- related videos that are uploaded by others and the user whose page you are watching the video on (marked with an X in the image below).

(bear in mind, not all users are producers, many simply upload other content).

Anyway, one thing marketers tell me is that they hesitate advertising on YouTube not only because of the content on the page, but also because they fear what content is linked to off a page they might be running ads on.

This is not that revolutionary, frankly.  YouTube is already pushing “partner content” over non-partner content.  When you do a search for a given topic, you are given the option to search only from “partner pages”.

This is more than a tacit way to drive traffic to monetizable areas… so I wonder, why bother linking to UGC content (in the X above) which is either not monetizable and scares advertisers away.

After all, anyone selling ads will tell you, ensuring that the content on a given site/page is “sponge worthy” is not enough, you also have to ensure that the page is not linking to something seedy or nefarious.

Google does not care about having less users and less content if it’s monetizable content.  If you doubt me, consider this: Google forces advertisers to pay a minimum cost per click to advertise, willing to serve search queries without any ads instead of serving low CPC priced ads.  It will apply the same philosophy to YouTube, too, especially as it finds itself with less margin to play with to meet numbers.

Just another tip for our friends at YouTube.  More such tips:

- Memo to YouTube: Do This, You’ll Print Money
- 4% is Part of the Solution
- YouTube’s Nuclear Option to Monetize its Content