Playback: There has been a lot of talk about ‘free’ distribution on the Internet, but how do people get paid for their work?

Glick: One of the neat things about the Internet actually is [that] it dis-intermediates a lot of traditional obstacles to getting paid.

It can let content creators get paid directly for their work rather than having to pay distributors and promoters and all sorts of other service providers that in the traditional media world are part of where the money goes. The Internet has models for getting paid that basically puts money directly into the content creator’s pocket.

Is there a concrete example from Google you can give me?

Sure. For YouTube, for example, if you are a content creator and you put a video up on YouTube, you sign up for the YouTube Partner program, which anybody can do… you have to demonstrate that you have all the rights to the video. We’re not doing this for pirated videos, obviously; YouTube is all about respecting copyright, and that’s an important thing to note.

So for original content, if you are a YouTube partner – and you don’t have to be a big multinational to be a partner is the point, you’re just a person with original content – you can run ads against your content, and when people click on those ads, you get paid.

Is Google acting as a worldwide distributor and/or exhibitor?

Google is a platform. So the great thing is that the content creators can distribute themselves. So they decide when to put their stuff online. They decide how and if to monetize it. And Google, through YouTube, provides the platform for that to happen. And there are obviously other platforms for the distribution of content online and people can create their own platform.

You know, YouTube isn’t even yet four years old [it turns four at the end of April]. So it’s funny we think of YouTube as this thing that we couldn’t live without – this thing that there’s so much amazing content on – and it’s really only existed for the blink of an eye.

If Google provides a free international distribution/exhibition and promotion system, what does Google get out of this deal?

The short answer is that most of Google’s products are ad-driven, so Google search is ad-supported – that’s what those sponsored links on the side of your search results are; those are ads… and there [are] ads on YouTube.

So it is ad revenue that we’re talking about that supports or drives this system?

That’s right. And the amazing thing about the ad system is that the ad system itself is also a platform, because it’s a platform for small businesses to advertise and reach customers in ways that they never would have otherwise, because you can have a really specific-targeted ad on a particular set of key words on a particular set of interests and reach precisely the customers to whom your ad is relevant.

And so that relevancy in advertising makes for a better user experience [for people who are using the products], and it’s also more valuable to advertisers, and better for Google, and better for the content producers whose content those ads are being run on.

So if I’m Mongrel Media, for instance, and I want to promote this new film in Hot Docs called Waterlife, I can put an ad there that will pop up when someone does a ‘water’ and ‘film’ search?

Yes. So if your key words were ‘water’ and ‘film,’ then every time people search for ‘water’ and ‘film’ or ‘water’ and ‘movie,’ and your ad came up, you would be targeting people who have already expressed an interest in water-related movies. [And you’re only charged if they click on your ad. You’re not charged for the ‘views.’]

So these online ads are what we call ROI-driven [return-on-investment], but the basic idea is there’s a demonstrated value to the advertiser, because a user not only expresses interest by virtue of the fact that they’ve typed in that search in Google, but they express an interest in that particular ad by clicking on it. And that’s also how we know whether ads are relevant or not – if people are clicking on them.

Is it accurate to say a small business or independent content creator can control how much is spent for advertising, based on how much one is willing ‘to bid’?

We’re getting into another level of complexity because the ad prices are based on an auction, a real-time auction every time a search is done, so we can tell you all about how that works. [It means that the ads that show up the highest are the most relevant, not the ones that got the most money from the advertiser.]

It’s important to know that you can’t buy your way to the top; that relevance in the ads is important, just as relevance in search results is important, because what Google is trying to do here is ultimately have a compelling user experience.

But it still doesn’t answer the question of who will pay the talent, the actors or the directors, for instance?

That would be a question for the actors and directors to negotiate with the producers, I suppose.

From Google’s point of view, is whoever signs off as content creator, producer or ‘Google partner’ on the hook to pay everyone involved with the production?

That’s right. And that makes sense, right, because you could have all sorts of deals struck with people who make your movie. You could have them on a fee basis, ‘I’ve paid you and it’s fee for service and we’re done’; or you could say, ‘I’m going to split a portion of the ad revenues with you on this basis.’ You know, there’s all sorts of deals you could come up with to finance these things.