People have been asking me about Google’s recent purchase of YouTube for $1.6 Billion and is it something that corporations should look at. My impression of YouTube is that it is very much a consumer-driven platform that is a little bit like the Wild West.

A corporation that is at all concerned about their message or their brand would be better served to stay on the sidelines for a while until Google figures out what it intends to do with its new acquistion.

I sense the direction that Google will try to go with YouTube is to integrate video ads (ala AdSense) into the videos that get uploaded. They will build some sort of upload interface that will allow them to insert an ad at the beginning of a video clip based on keywords.

Although YouTube is extremely popular with the early-adopters and 18-34 year-olds that make up the bulk of the visitors, I’m sure it will start to mature like an web-based technology.

Even though it will be now run by Google, I don’t see YouTube become a tool that will benefit Business-to-Business advertisers or those that aren’t targeting Gen-X or Gen-Yers.