Google's YouTube has announced its acquisition of video-editing startup Directr, in a bid to help expand the advertising capabilities of small businesses.
The amount of the acquisition was not disclosed.
"Directr is joining the YouTube ads team, where they'll help us make it easier for advertisers to create and upload awesome videos," said YouTube on its Google+ page. "Besides making the existing Directr app free on iOS, we aren't making any immediate changes. Stay tuned for more info."
With the acquisition of Directr, YouTube is looking to make video advertisement production simpler and less expensive for small businesses.
Directr is currently offering, for a monthly fee, video production tools for small businesses to make low-cost videos. The monthly fee ranges from $25 to $400, depending on the features of the tools being accessed and the usage rate.
YouTube is looking to continue offering these tools, but will make them free.
"For now, everything you love about Directr is staying the same and we'll continue to focus on helping businesses create great video quickly and easily. One immediate bonus: Directr will soon be all free, all the time. Thanks, YouTube!" posted the Directr team on the company's official blog.
YouTube's acquisition of Directr seems to go against the company's strategy of chasing big brand advertisers. Earlier in the year, the company started offering advertising packages that look like TV advertising deals to generate more revenue from high-spending advertisers.
However, it seems that YouTube is looking not just to generate revenue from the upper portion of the advertising spectrum, but also from the lower portion.
Small businesses find it difficult to participate in video advertising along with the big companies because of the hefty costs of producing and running a video advertisement compared to using alternatives such as online print advertisements.
With YouTube making it much cheaper to produce them, the video sharing website is looking to have the small businesses instead spend their budget on having the ads run on advertisement channels such as YouTube.
Small businesses that have video advertisements put up on YouTube will complete the website's inventory, which is especially helpful for advertisement spots that big companies are avoiding. While these big brands avoid user-generated videos, smaller businesses may be open to filling these spots up, especially if they come at lower rates.
The Directr team will be joining YouTube as part of the video ads department.
There have been no reports if an Android version of the app will be created, though the possibility is high.
