When YouTube launched in 2005, success on the Web was measured largely by the number of users who visited a site. Now YouTube is trying a different strategy: letting users avoid visiting its site altogether.

On Wednesday, YouTube announced the next step in its transformation from destination to application, releasing a set of free software tools that let Web developers create fully functional YouTube players on their own sites. Unlike previous embedded YouTube players, which simply streamed videos, these new tools would allow users on other sites to search the YouTube inventory, comment on and rate videos, and even upload clips to YouTube's servers--essentially everything that users would have done on YouTube's site.

For Web developers, the deal means generous access to YouTube's user base. "We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand or support for your cause," reads a statement in the company's blog. "It's all free, and it's available to everyone."

Among the possible applications for the software, YouTube announced that Electronic Arts' (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ) upcoming game, "Spore," will allow players to upload clips of the game's characters to the Web. Tivo will also allow users to access and upload YouTube videos from their televisions. Casio and Logitech are both creating cameras that allow users to upload video directly to the site.

So where's the upside for YouTube's parent company, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )? A YouTube spokeswoman says the release promises to bring more and better content to YouTube. As for actual revenue, the site's new software tools are focused on "user experience, not monetization."

But distributing YouTube around the Web isn't an act of charity. By giving away its site's traffic in exchange for more video views, Google is likely betting on the future of "in-stream" advertising--video ad clips or pictorial ads overlaid on videos--rather than the display ads or text ads that typically appear on Google's sites.

Google has struggled to profit from YouTube's enormous stock of videos and user accounts since the search giant acquired the company in October of 2006. Video advertising holds promise for eventually wringing money out of YouTube: Online video ad spending accounted for 3.5% of the $21.7 billion it projected to be spent on online ads last year, up from 2.4% of online ad spending in 2006, according to the online ad research firm eMarketer. Another eMarketer study in October found that video spending grew 47.2% in 2007, more than either pictorial display ads or the text ads that appear next to search results.

For Google, whose revenue mainly comes from pay-per-click ads, a focus on in-stream ads would be a new tactic. Though YouTube began experimenting with clickable overlay ads on videos last year, users aren't likely to click on any ad that interrupts a video, says Forrester's Andrew Frank. Instead, in-video ads promote brand advertising with short messages rather than herding users to a Web site. "As Web sites like YouTube get more embedded in other people's pages, there's an opportunity for a kind of self-contained interaction that could substitute for that venerable click-through," he says.

Brand advertising--rather than begging for clicks--still represents the majority of most advertisers' budgets, says eMarketer analyst David Hallerman. Television advertisers, in particular, want to find more channels for spreading their ads online, he says, and YouTube may be able to tap into that spending. "Video ads might not fully bloom for a few years," says Hallerman. "But the ability of video to capture the attention and emotions of viewers is what brand marketers are looking for online."