In a move that investors and marketers alike should applaud, Google's figured out another way to make money off the site it bought for $1.65 billion three and a half years ago.  Today, Google explained that it's come up with a tool to help small organizations advertise on YouTube.

Emily Williams, a member of the Inside AdWords team, explained on the corporate blog, "[W]e're announcing another new feature in Display Ad Builder that lets advertisers use simple templates to create InVideo overlays and companion ads on YouTube."  (FYI: "An InVideo ad is an animated flash overlay that appears at the bottom part of a video that a user is watching.")

Williams later continued, "Now, any advertiser can use Display Ad Builder to turn their image ads into overlays and run a campaign on YouTube in minutes.  Depending on the type of campaign an advertiser wants to run, overlays can be bought on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis, and can be matched to YouTube videos based on numerous criteria (like demographics or content categories), or even on a video by video level."

This could prove to be a very popular option, considering that takeover ads on the YouTube homepage are said to be sold far in advance for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  And the move also earns points for being low risk, since it probably didn't take much in the way of resources to execute and doesn't cut any privacy corners.

Now we just get to guess how much Google will actually make from the new feature.  One slightly relevant note: earlier this month, a Citigroup analyst estimated that YouTube will pull in about $1 billion in gross revenue this year.

The worldwide mobile applications market is on track to be worth $17.5 by 2012, according to a new report commissioned by GetJar, the globe's second largest app store.

Mobile app downloads across all handsets are estimated to climb from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012, a year-over- year growth rate of 92 percent.

GetJar commissioned consulting firm Chetan Sharma Consulting to examine the rapidly expanding global apps market. The goal of the study was to look at the potential and real value of the mobile apps market worldwide.

Apps markets are evolving differently worldwide, indicating a need for creating different apps business models instead of a "one size fits all" approach. For example, the average app selling price (ASP) in North America was $1.09, significantly higher compared to ASPs in developing markets such as South America ($0.20) and Asia ($0.10).

The revenue potential in Europe is set to soar from $1.5 billion in 2009 to $8.5 billion in 2012, while in North America the figure will increase from $2.1 billion to $6.7 billion in 2012. Currently apps are most popular in Asia, with the region accounting for 37% of global downloads in 2009. However, while Asia had the highest number of downloads, users in North America spent the most money on apps, accounting for over 50% of revenue

Other highlights from the report include:

*Advertising based revenue models have become increasingly popular. In 2009, advertising contributed almost 12% of the overall apps revenue. However, this share is expected to more than double to over 28% by 2012 - given the high proportion of prepay users in developing markets.

*The battle of the app stores is well underway - in 2009 the number of app stores leapt from eight to 38 - an increase of 375%. The number of app stores is expected to further increase in 2010.

*The price of mobile applications can vary from $0.99 to $999, however the average selling price in 2009 was approximately $1.9. This is predicted to decrease by 29% over the next three years, although advertising revenue derived from apps is likely to stay relatively flat.

"With the consumer appetite for mobile apps rocketing, the opportunities for developers are huge," said Ilja Laurs, CEO and founder, GetJar.

"This report signifies a battle for survival of the fittest among app stores worldwide - with app revenue and growth opportunities growing significantly. There is no way that this many app stores will survive in the long term and while the value of the global app economy is set to be astoundingly high by 2012, we think only a few app stores will share this revenue."
 

Although the "thud" wasn't verified until this afternoon, it seems that an online giant fell a couple of days ago.  According to new data from Hitwise, Facebook managed to beat Google in terms of visits between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.

The graph visible below makes the changeup pretty clear (blame the sloppy enlarged bit on us, not Hitwise).  What's more, it doesn't look like Facebook's going to relinquish its lead anytime soon.

Heather Dougherty explained, "The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame."

Then here's one more interesting fact, courtesy of Dougherty: "Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week."

Anyway, this development represents a major win for Facebook.  The ability to represent the social network as the number one site should count for a lot as corporate representatives talk to advertisers and investors, and could result in a direct boost in revenue.  A further snowball effect in terms of user interest might occur, too, since most people like to be part of something that's popular.

The clash between Google and the Chinese government appears to be coming to a head.  Various sources have reported that Google ignored a cut-off date to reregister as an Internet content provider in China, and more importantly, that the company has stopped censoring search results.

Let's get the paperwork-related story out of the way first.  Charles Arthur wrote this morning, "Google missed a deadline to re-register as an 'internet content provider' (ICP) in China last night, which observers say is a sign that it is preparing to shut down its search engine there."

As for the news related to Google.cn and a lack of censorship, something has definitely occurred.  Following some tests, Adrienne Mong wrote, "Web sites dealing with subjects such as the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Tibet and regional independence movements could all be accessed through Google's Chinese search engine Tuesday . . ."

Other people have seen uncensored results, too, although filters apparently kick in on occasion.

Google's stayed pretty tight-lipped during all of this.  One spokesperson told Arthur that the company actually has until the end of March to reregister.  Another told Mong that nothing's changed.  So it's possible that we're just seeing a case of deadline confusion strike at the same time as some technical problems.

Google may have finally taken a stand with regards to censorship in China, though, and is just daring the Chinese government to challenge its position.

We'll be sure to stay on top of this situation as it develops.