Wedding-March YouTube Video Spikes ‘Forever’ Sales

“Forever,” by Chris Brown, shot up to No. 4 on the iTunes chart and No. 3 on Amazon’s MP3 store due to the viral video on YouTube (see below) featuring the song used as a wedding march by Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz, according to a post on the YouTube Biz Blog.

Brown’s record label, Sony Music, created an overlay with a click-to-buy ad on the video, using YouTube’s content-management tools, and the overlay directed people to one of those two download sites.

To date, the video has been watched more than 12 million times on YouTube.

YouTube technical-account manager Chris LaRosa and music-partner manager Ali Sandler wrote on the blog:

One of our main goals at YouTube is to help content creators effectively make money from the distribution of their content online. That they can do so in a way that brings artists and our community together to create fun, spontaneous and inspiring works is one of the best and most exciting things about YouTube.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.