YouTube.ca launched yesterday with a (ho hum) focus on Canada. Whooppee, funny Canadian cat tricks. Whooohoo, Avril Lavigne videos. Ooops, scratch that, copyrighted material. Whooohoo, 10 looooooooooooooooonnnnngggggggg minutes of watching ice melt from that cold place way up north.

Oh oh. Am I sounding too cynical?

Driving home last night, listening to the Toronto radio station ANATT (All News All The Time), I struggled to think how this could possibly be news? And I wondered what the business case was that could possibly warrant a Canadian YouTube site.

Of course, in the end, it's as plain as the billboard on my belt buckle. It's about not the video message, but the marketing message. A revenue stream, and of course, that's just as it should be. YouTube.ca is not as much about Canadian video content as it is about Canadian advertising content. And that's perfectly fine and it makes sense cents.

But I also found myself a little annoyed. For more than a few months, I've had my eyes on a little Canadian outfit Video.ca, wondering if they'd garner any traction.

And for almost as long, I'd hoped they a) had a marketing manager or agency; b) had some nominal financial backing; and c) had chanced upon the fact that there were at one point, no paid advertisers for the Google.ca search term "video" or "videos".

There still remain few advertisers under those terms, but guess what — the number one position paid position for videos now belongs to– yup, you guessed it… YouTube.ca.

File under: Missed opportunity.

Have a good one.

~The (SEP) Guy

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