While the changes were met with uproar from a characteristically vocal hardcore YouTube user base, they actually offer ripe opportunities for brands.

According to Social Media Examiner, there are only three major changes to get to grips with, so here we go:

1. Redesigned home page

If you’ve logged in to YouTube since December, you’ll have noticed its slicker-looking home page. At its heart is a prominently positioned “Subscription Feed”, replacing the previous trending videos – and much better news for brands.

What this means for marketers: As viewers view, rate and comment on your latest viral video, their followers and subscribers will in turn be exposed to your content. No longer will brands have to compete with cute baby and hilarious kitten clips. We expect this move to create a more relevant, if smaller, viral effect.

How to maximise the change: Be consistently active, posting fresh content to YouTube weekly and use calls to action to drive rates, comments and shares of your videos.

2. New channel page

As well as looking different, YouTube channels are now more likely to feature on search results pages for related keywords.

What this means for marketers: It’s more good news for brands, as YouTube moves to become more channel-centric and complement your video SEO strategy.

How to maximise the change: Use your main keyword phrase properly in your channel to ensure visibility in search results.

Click the “Edit Channel” button on the top-right hand corner of your channel page to upload a new background image, edit your channel details (filling out the title, description and tags properly) and customise with a template (Social Media Examiner strongly recommends the “Blogger” layout.

Be sure to edit your featured video (the one that auto-plays when people visit your channel) and – importantly – add links to your website, blog and social pages to drive traffic to your other online properties.

Seize the opportunity to use compelling, benefit-driven copy to encourage your YouTube viewers to click through to your website.

3. YouTube Analytics

Indulge your inner geek with the tool formerly known as YouTube Insight.

What this means for marketers: You can delve deep into your audience, videos and activity on YouTube to deduce and rectify any issues with your viral videos to improve results.

How to maximise this change: Use the ‘audience retention’ and playback location’ features to learn exactly what elements of your video are the most (and least) popular with your audience. It’s all valuable learning for future video content.

FPR’s Final Thought:

Many have dismissed the value of YouTube for brands, but we believe in the power of the world’s third-largest website and its audience for companies large and small.

Ultimately, it will pay to embrace YouTube’s evolving vision and keep abreast of the tweaks or risk being left behind in the video marketing game.

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments on viral video marketing, positive or negative. Have you seen results from online video content, either on YouTube or elsewhere, or did your clips get lost in cyberspace? Please post below.

source: Viral Video Chart

YouTube describe the “Life in a day” project as: ‘a historic cinematic experiment that will attempt to do just that: document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world.’

The party aims to harness the emotive power of broadcast media to influence UK YouTube viewers, estimated by ComScore (Feb 2010) to be streaming 88 million videos a day, though how many access the site via the home page remains unknown.

The move is also calculated to block any of the other parties from similarly hijacking the ‘YouTube vote’.

“Our YouTube homepage ad on polling day lets us take our message of change to millions of people – ensuring we’ll be the only party reaching a mass audience online,” a spokesperson for the Conservatives said.

YouTube continues to be a chief driver, with Google sites overall up 17%, though comScore has noticed a trend towards longer format video viewing in the UK, something also seen in the US, with views of BBC sites, for example, up 143% on last year.

“In particular, we’ve seen eyeballs move towards the online channel to watch more long-form, professional video content, such as popular broadcast network TV shows” says comScore director Mike Read.

Some marketers are keen to exploit the growth in video viewing, Reckitt Benckiser, owner of brands including Nurofen, Finish & Calgon is doubling spend on online video to $40 million this year, according to a report in Ad Age.

In order to encourage people to stay on the site for hours rather than minutes, he says, “we need to create a much more seamless experience across devices.”

Interviewed in The Telegraph, Hurley says “People think about the world of TV and the world of online video as being different ways to distribute video, but what happens when every TV is connected to wi-fi with a browser? What does that mean for your distribution opportunities? And these budgets dedicated to digital online – that proportion spent on video versus the big dollars that are being spent against TV – what happens when those worlds collide and is it just one thing? That is what we envision.”

Expressing confidence that YouTube is on course to become a truly profitable machine, attracting advertisers in their droves, as well as its billion views a day, Hurley asks whether the iPad is a phone or a computer or a TV. It’s a rhetorical question, serving to underline his thoughts about the future of media channels, in which YouTube’s future success is all tied up: “People continue to try to throw things in the buckets when really these are all going to be different-sized devices with a connection to the internet.”

Adds Salar Kalamangar, vice president of product management, and one of the people behind Google’s highly successful AdWords model: “When you think about the TV ads market and how large that is, and in the future that content is going to be delivered via IP…we think we are in a great position to lead the way.”