YouTube tries to grab a chunk of the TV advertising industry’s budget

Google is doubling down on its efforts to attract big-name advertisers to its YouTube streaming video service  by offering them a guaranteed number of views, according to advertisers that spoke with the Wall Street Journal.

Google’s actions are part of its strategy to grab a larger chuck of the ad budget that typically goes to TV commercials. The TV ad industry collectively generates over $66 billion in ad sales annually. If YouTube can grab even a small piece of that, it’ll be a huge boon for Google.

So how exactly is the company planning to do this? Well, for one, Google is telling advertisers that it’ll reward anyone who makes a long-term commitment to advertise on YouTube by guaranteeing that ads get the impact they expect. If advertisers pay for an ad and expect to get 8 million unique views in a set time period but only get 6 million, YouTube will air that same ad until it gets the full impact.

The guarantee is nothing new, and is something that advertisers are routinely guaranteed by TV networks. In fact advertisers have been requesting such terms from Google on YouTube for a while, according to WSJ’s report.