YouTube gets a makeover to tap more ad

BANGALORE, INDIA: A redesigned feature on YouTube will let users separates its premium and long-form programming from the user-posted videos that account for most of the site's activity.

With the new feature, users can see that the current navigation scheme that funnels users into videos, channels and community categories has been done away with. Instead, the layout will be replaced with a tabbed navigation with clearly defined sections for professional content, said a ClickZ report.

According to the report, the new design will offer four tabs, namely Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos. While the tabs under Movies, Music and Shows will have premium shows, clips, and movies on offer from the network and studio partners of Google. All these will be monetized with in-stream advertising, the report added.

In the meantime, the Videos tab will bring on amateur and semi-pro content, which till recently was ignored by major brand advertisers. The redesigning part has brought in changes to YouTube's video player too. The new design is similar to what Hulu, the News Corp and NBCU-owned video portal offers currently.

The new video player will show visual markers in places where ads are scheduled to play. The new, improved YouTube player will also allow users to reduce the brightness of screen real estate outside the video frame.

It is being said that Google has told advertisers that it's working to sign new deals to syndicate more recent shows and movies, and is also experimenting with ways to offer YouTube ad inventory through its Google TV ad buying system for broadcast and cable TV spots.

The redesign of Facebook was not received very well by the users. What do you think of this new makeover of YouTube?