Google hosted an event in Manhattan yesterday to pitch advertisers on YouTube. Silicon Alley Insider's Michael Learmonth tried to crash and got booted. The New York Times's Louise Story played nice and apparently got to stay, but later told readers the "bulk of the event" was "off the record." Apparently, neither tried Google search. Attendee Ian Schafer, CEO of a digital marketing agency, was happy to blog everything.

On his blog he reports that "the real news was YouTube's announcement of an impending launch of advanced analytics tools."

You'll be able to see where video views are coming from (geographically and site-wise), as well as many other data points. This will be a huge help to advertisers trying to extract more success metrics and data from their YouTube efforts.

Other highlights, according to Schaffer:

For Content Partners/Creators

• Get ready for active sharing.
  
• Get ready for upgraded video editing tools.
  
• YouTube will be launching video recommendations based upon your viewing preferences (like Amazon Recommendations).
  
• Content will be distributed on multiple platforms, from mobile to TV (Steve Chen is excited about content on really, really big TVs).

Tent pole Content Initiatives
• The YouTube Games — some kind of takeoff on the Olympics. Looks to be a kind of wacky wide world of weird sports.
• Living Legends — content featuring, well, living legends. The first legends featured will be The Rolling Stones. This looks pretty great.
• The YouTube Global Gathering — simultaneous events worldwide, broadcast on YouTube.

Real secret stuff. We'd chide Learmonth and Story for not working harder to get the scoop, but now that Schafer has shared YouTube's secrets, it hardly seems worth it.