great tool, I just needed something like this :)

Funny, look at what was prinetd by Wired this month:
[wired.com...]

Conclusion:
1) Google people read Wired
2) Google people follow new ideas from Japan

No wonder they are doing this.

More text = more hints on ad targeting = more advertising opportunities!

Note that annotations do not appear with embedded videos--yet. They are working on it.

The more they do with this, the more work for webmasters. (If you get paid by the hour or the project, that's a good thing. If not, too bad.)

More text = more hints on ad targeting = more advertising opportunities!

Must be. Because I really do not see the added value to the user experience here.

>I really do not see the added value to the user experience here.

Try it, you'll see that adding links can bring a story or video alive. Linking to other stories, videos, etc., will bring more interaction, and drive traffic to other places.

Put your marketing hat on and review it again. ;)

This is a great addition. I can see it being use for video tutorials. Awesome. This fits perfect for what I wanted to do with a new site.

Conclusion:
1) Google people read Wired
2) Google people follow new ideas from Japan

3) Google people are keen on internet jokes, check out the Shell Game and play the "hard" version that they link to at the end. Good times :)

No seriously, this is way awesome- finally a way to push people to "Visit example.com site to learn more" at the end of a video before the 'related' videos pop up and possibly redirect the users attention elsewhere. HOT!

Hi
There is great tool for affiliate who want to add links/ banner/ images to any video (including youtube video).
The mainadvantage is the embed option, which allow you to run the video with links /banner or comments in your site.
<snip>

Avi

[edited by: engine at 4:41 pm (utc) on June 5, 2008]
[edit reason] no specific sites, thanks [/edit]

Perfect addition. Bravo YouTube!

It would be great if you could add links to sites other than YouTube.

Notice what it says in the link field:

Paste link to a YouTube Video, Channel, or Search result.

Try to paste any external link in the field and you get this error:

You have entered an invalid URL

So while, sure, it's nice for adding annotations to videos, its benefit from a marketing perspective is severely limited.

>its benefit from a marketing perspective is severely limited.

Let's have some creativity..

have you never used messages appearing in the screen?
add www.example.com
or add PromoDiscount code xyz
etc.

They don't have to be clickable. ;)

Change it with ease as traffic varies.

Anyone else with ideas... let's be positive.

I like it! A lot!
It's like YouTube meets PowerPoint.
The options for closed captioning are exciting for hearing-impaired (or sound card impaired) viewers, without having the text embedded right in the video (annoying).

engine:

I do that in my videos already. I don't need the annotations to accomplish that.

So annotations do not seem to add any additional marketing advantage over what was already available.

As it is now the annotations don't work if the video is embedded, it just shows as any other.

This might be a great tool when out of Beta but only if it will be possible to embedd the annoted videos, link freely and navigate interactive videos (clicking on the video) without being routed to a Youtube page.

I saw a video on youtube using this last week? It was a magic trick where you choose your card clicked it and then the guy comes over and said your card is not here or something... Just a terrible attempt at a magic trick but very cool technology!