YouTube’s annoying Advertising – Here are 3 of my Alternatives

Have anyone else been exposed to YouTube’s new ad format? Well, basically it goes like this. You search, click a link and then expect to see the video right away. Sadly, you are now put on hold for a few seconds (30s max) and have to watch a commercial. Luckily this doesn’t play out for every video you watch, and I haven’t seen at what frequency they are going to use this, but I sure as hell hope they charge BILLIONS for it as it really f**ks with my user experience.

Alternative 1 – Flashvars CPC

I don’t think any ad format that interrupts user experience will be good in the long run. They should work with dynamic annotations and cpc within videos. Allow for the use of flashvars so that the advertisers can make interactive video-formats and CPO deals. Naturally, the marketeer would have to pay for this as a service, but I think most would as the limits… well there are no limits to what you could do with such a system.

This actually worked before YouTube put a stop to it. Was one of my favorite “creative” tactics for YouTube videos.

Alternative 2 – Ad rating

Put a section where you only display ad-videos and make it a contest. The users will then like/dislike the different videos. This would create a toplist of commercials. I am sure that companies would pay a small sum each month to be added to a list like that.

Alternative 3 – Related products

Now, the long tail on YouTube is fantastic. We know they can index the content of a video by looking at what they did over att Google video. Why not put related products that are relevant for the video itself. For poker, put poker products, for fashion, put fashion products. Not on the side, but as a part of the main content area. Especially as you are working with flash and annotations you could create a “product annotation” where an advertiser puts in a link to an xml-document listing products for different places in the video. That way you could actually buy the dress that someone is wearing by clicking it, or adding it directly to your purchase basket.

I guess that is about it for now, but there are no limitations on how YouTube easily could monetize if they would just move away from the traditional display ad format. I guess this format was produced in order to be able to push advertising to the 80% of the views that are not taking place on YouTube. I wonder what Facebook will say when they find out that Google earns money from ads on their platform 😀 haha..

//Jesper

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4 thoughts on “YouTube’s annoying Advertising – Here are 3 of my Alternatives”

  1. Cool. Thnx. This was news to me, have never seen it before. Perhaps it is a slow roll out.

    I agree with you. An opt out once it starts would probably be the best solution for this specific format.

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