News

Kadokawa, YouTube to Share Ads on User-Generated Videos

Kadokawa Group Holdings and Google's YouTube video-sharing service will launch a program that places advertisement around user-generated videos with Kadokawa's copyrighted materials in June. In the past, Kadokawa and other companies have manually scoured YouTube's videos for copyright-infringing material (or used YouTube's new automated identification system), and removed them from the public viewing. Under the new system, Kadokawa will decide if some user-generated content with its materials can stay on YouTube with its permission. If such a video is approved, Kadokawa and YouTube will share ad profits with the user who posted the video. This arrangement is the first such plan in Japan, and there is the possibility that it will expand to other companies.

According to the Nikkei news source, the strategy will legitimize user-generated content and publicize Kadokawa's original works worldwide. The plan capitalizes on the phenomenon of MAD movies — the recently coined Japanese term for user-generated content that incorporates pre-existing audio, images, video, or animation. Kadokawa already launched its own Kadokawa Anime Channel in February with entire anime series, and discussed the ways it will work with YouTube in March.

Source: Nikkei