Fight For You Right: IFL Partnering With Google Ads, YouTube

By John Ourand, Staff Writer

IFL has set up a multi-year video sharing partnership with GoogleAds and YouTube that will lead to short-form highlights, behind-the-scenes and instructional videos that will be posted on YouTube and shared with thousands of sites that use Google AdSense and YouTube players. The deal is expected to be announced formally today. The first piece of content will be video from IFL's World Grand Prix on November 3, originally shown on MyNetworkTV. The broadcaster showed two of the seven fights. The other five will be seen for the first time on YouTube. IFL describes the deal as similar to ones GoogleAds and YouTube cut with the NBA, NHL, CBS and EA Sports. The companies will split ad revenue generated by the traffic to the YouTube channels. IFL says it has averaged about 20,000 initial views for some of the content it previously had posted independently on YouTube. The move is part of a viral strategy for IFL, which expects to cut a similar deal with the social networking site PalTalk.