With podcasts being the latest crowd favorite, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that YouTube is keen to have a slice of the lucrative new segment. An internal document that has leaked online also revealed there already are grand plans afoot on how best to tap into a segment where many of its competitors seem to have an edge already.

As PodNews claimed, YouTube is working towards making the ingestion process simple and easy. Ingestion, according to an 84-page slide presentation meant for podcast publishers which PodNews said it has access to refers to the process of uploading the podcasts on YouTube. This also refers to RSS feeds as well. Further, a new search and discovery tool is also being mooted, one that will include official podcast cards as well in the search results. All of it would go on to be hosted at youtube.com/podcasts though the page is yet to go live.

Further, Google also has plans to include audio ads within the podcasts though those are going to be Google-sold initially but would include partner-sold ads as well at a later stage. Also, while there is no word yet on the revenue split arrangement Google plans to get into with the publishers, it likely is going to be similar to what Google does with its video venture.

Among the other things that the YouTube slide presentation included is audience analytics. That would include ‘new metrics for audio-first creators’, the slide mentioned, and is going to be compatible with podcast attribution companies such as Nielsen, PodTrac, and Chartable, the latter being owned by Spotify.

The post Google working to emerge as a serious player in the podcast space first appeared on Good e-Reader.