Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. said he believed the music industry will join one part of the lucrative media food chain to which it had previously never been invited: Advertising sales. Why? Online video.

Warner was the first music label to land an ad revenue sharing deal with YouTube.

“We as an industry create compelling emotional experiences between consumers and artists, which theoretically should create a very robust advertising opportunity,” he said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York.  ”Yet as an industry, we essentially have no advertising.”

Reuters coverage from the Summit.

Here are some excerpts of his interview with Reuters reporter Yinka Adegoke: 

• “Were trying to think about what the digital world offers us in terms of opportunities much more broadly than just the transfer of our physical model to a different platform.”
• “There could be advertising on any number of (outlets) certainly YouTube and Google are much more likely to be advertising platforms than they are transaction platforms. Artists’ fan sites are opportunities for targeted advertising, whether thats an opt-in or opt-out model remains to be seen. There are lots of robust opportunities where consumers will come to share content, to view content and interact with content that may be much more prone to an advertising-driven model than a transaction model.”