Watch it on YouTube, then Click-to-Buy

We're happy when we can help YouTube users enjoy the content they love, and we're happy when we can help our partners build their businesses online – but we're happiest when we can do both.

That's why last year we launched our eCommerce platform for YouTube, which allows users to easily "click-to-buy" products -- like songs and movies -- related to the content they're watching on the site. The past few months have demonstrated that great content on YouTube leads to increased sales. For example, when Monty Python launched their channel in November, not only did their YouTube videos shoot to the top of the most viewed lists, but their DVDs also quickly climbed to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.

Today we're expanding the program beyond the US and the UK. Links to songs from the iTunes Store will now appear in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, so users from those countries who are drawn to a particular song can easily purchase it. And it's not limited to tracks on videos uploaded directly by our partners – partners can add these links to videos uploaded by users by using our our Content ID tools to claim videos that match their content.

We're also expanding and improving the ways in which these links are displayed. You may start to see click-to-buy links appearing as semi-transparent overlays that appear in the bottom of the video for a short period of time. This increased visibility should help even more people take advantage of this program.

As we said when we first launched click-to-buy links, this is just the beginning – over time, we're aiming to open up the program to cover many types of content beyond music. We've already experimented with links to purchase DVDs and video games, and we intend to experiment with links to additional types of products soon.


Happy shopping,

The YouTube Team