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Advertising on Commercials: This is YouTube’s Best Monetization Scheme?

I’ve got a great revenue model for you:

Take a minute-long commercial from a major brand and put it on YouTube.

Then put someone else’s ad prominently to the right of it. Make sure it flashes and sparkles a lot so it distracts you from the commercial that consumers are going there to watch.

Then, 8 seconds into the video, run an overlay covering the bottom quarter of the screen. Animate the hell out of the overlay. And run the overlay for a full 20 seconds – so it’s there during one-third of the time you’re watching the commercial.

If this is the best online video can bring, everyone might as well give up and let marketers’ budgets stay on television.

It’s not just YouTube. The Internet Movie Database runs pre-roll ads before movie trailers. You can wind up sitting through a 30-second ad before watching an ad for a movie.

This is how bad online advertising gets, and it’s from our biggest and supposedly best publishers out there. And for now, consumers let them get away with it.

People in online advertising complain that standards for online ads are set too high. Apparently we’re not setting them high enough.

youtube tiger ad

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Comments to: Advertising on Commercials: This is YouTube’s Best Monetization Scheme?
  • Avatar
    April 9, 2009

    I think hulu has done it best. Short, non-intrusive ads. I’m happy to watch them because i know exactly how many seconds until my show starts again….

    Reply
  • Avatar
    April 9, 2009

    Amen. Great post, David!

    Reply
  • Avatar
    April 9, 2009

    I think you’ll like this website: http://www.ceaseadvertising.com/

    Reply
  • Avatar
    April 9, 2009

    I tweeted this but I’ll share here too: overall i’m pro-ads (and an agency
    guy), just not when they kill user experience
    i am in favor of some good debate around advertising though and hope cease
    advertising helps further the discussion on what marketers consider most
    effective

    Reply
  • Avatar
    April 12, 2009

    Thank You…

    Reply
  • Avatar
    April 14, 2009

    Agree completely — cognitive overload. The hierarchy is muddled to the point that it devalues every placement. If I’m an advertiser I’d have to give serious consideration to placing the ad with a corresponding overlay or not using this at all…

    Reply
  • Avatar
    June 8, 2009

    Thank You..

    Reply
  • Avatar
    October 11, 2010

    The most annoying thing is that once you click the bottom ad to go off, it comes back for another bout of annoyance ! i doubt this style of adverting is going to disappear in the near future

    Reply

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