Red Herring announces that in a few months YouTube will include video ads. Most likely, you'll see ads only for the premium content, and the revenue will be shared with the content owners. This program should synchronize with "Claim your content", a feature that will automatically identify copyrighted material, assuming that content owners share some information about their videos.
It's not yet clear if anyone who uploads videos to YouTube can choose to have ads and to split revenue with Google, but one thing is sure: the format of the ads. "We're looking at executions like a very quick little intro preceding a video, then the video, then a commercial execution on the backside of the content", said YouTube's Suzie Reider.
While many people will say that those who visit YouTube don't like ads and they'll move to other video sites, Google's main priority is to create a model that works well for advertisers, but doesn't disrupt the user experience.
The ads should be placed at the end of videos or as ads along the side of the page. YouTube sends me data at 480Kbits/s, and I've got 5.5Mbit+... so I really don't want the first 20 seconds of my time consumed by ads, when the YouTube flash player already sucks. It can't fast-forward in a video like Google Video could... it has to download everything up until the fastforward point, and then it can play. Honestly, if YouTube puts ads at the beginning, I'm not going to use YouTube.
ReplyDeletePeople don't want to have a friend say "Watch this really cool video. It's awesome!" and have to wait another 30 seconds before being able to watch it. They want the movie right away. A more effective advertising model is to provide text links on the page of similar products. Say you're watching "Will It Blend?", there will be text links to kitchen appliance websites. If you're watching a basketball game, it'll send you to sports stores. If you're watching some home-made Star Wars spoof, it'll send you to an action figure website or retailer to buy Star Wars stuff. That really seems the least intrusive and the most beneficial to the end user and advertiser.
Maybe there could be miniature videos of product advertisements, or funny commercials as embedded videos on the side of the webpage, that the user can optionally play. (remember Super Bowl commercials?)
PS. People don't buy products when they're pissed.