As reported by Information Week, YouTube has launched a new service, called TrueView, which allows users to select an ad-skipping button in the first 5 seconds and then only charges advertisers for viewed ads.

The Google-owned YouTube site added the service last week and aims to reduce the frustration of users who don't want to be disrupted by ads, and to reduce the cost to advertisers to that they only pay for the adverts that are shown. The ad-skipping button has to be pressed within the first 5 seconds to be effective and also the advertiser will choose whether to offer the option. It will also improve the creativity of advertisers to get users to wait beyond the first 5 seconds.

The advertiser will also learn more about who is watching their ads, with access to demographic and other information that YouTube gathers on users. YouTube will charge advertisers only when a viewer has watched the full ad or the first 30 seconds, whichever is shorter. During the beta testing phase, YouTube found view-through rates of 20% to 70% (the measure of how many viewers opt-in to watch an ad, which is a strong indicator of the ads effectiveness).

YouTube is making the TrueView available in the United States and Canada initially but plans to make it available in other countries in the future. For now, advertisers have to contact a YouTube representative to buy the new format. The site plans to eventually offer it as a self-service option.

As reported widely in the media, such as the BBC, YouTube has reached its fifth anniversary and claims to now receive more than two billion 'hits' a day. This is, according to the owner of the site - Google - nearly double the number of people who tune into the US's 3 prime time TV stations combined.

YouTube co-founder, Chad Hurley, is reported as saying: "Two billion video streams is a large number but on average people are only spending 15 minutes a day on the site compared to five hours a day watching TV. I don't think we could have ever planned or imagined we would get to the scale or the size we are today". The site was bought by Google at the end of 2006 for $1.65bn and it was just seven months ago that it reported reaching one billion downloads a day, so the rapid rate of growth continues.

In March this year it was reported that 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Of course much of this is painful, time-wasting videos that demand little attention and clog up the site, but there are many entertaining and educational videos as well, with the site also giving the opportunity for new talents to display their creativity. YouTube is also being used by companies and organisations, with 'channels' hosted for everyone from Queen Elizabeth to the Pope and from President Barack Obama to the Iraqi government.

In the early days, YouTube was known for hosting pirated snippets of TV shows or movies. As the BBC report says, even today material gets pulled from the site because of issues over copyright. However, YouTube has been working hard to win over content makers as it modifies its service to stream professional films and cash in on a trend towards Internet television. Analysts have predicted that while the site has struggled to reach profitability since its creation, 2010 could be its year.

In another new Google announcement, this time on the Google Australia blog, the launch of Promoted Videos provides a way for advertisers to place their video on related pages on YouTube and across the web. Like Google AdWords, this new service is an advertising program that anyone can use to help potential customers discover a relevant video.

Promoted Videos will help companies find a relevant audience wherever they are on the web, whether it's searching or watching videos on YouTube or browsing across Google's network of publisher sites. These video campaigns are targeted by keyword and priced on a cost-per-click basis. These campaigns can be purchased and managed directly in Google AdWords, where advertisers can place bids, select where the videos should appear (such as on relevant YouTube search results pages, video watch pages, and Google's publisher network), and set daily spending budgets.

Google's aim is to provide a single destination for the overall Google advertising management tools, as well as giving YouTube advertisers who are new to AdWords the access to additional campaign tools. There are also 'Call-to-Action overlays' in Promoted Videos, whereby advertisers will be able to add a clickable overlay to their videos, allowing them to drive viewers to a website off YouTube. This means that advertisers can track the performance of a video and whether viewers are converting into customers.