YouTube has faced heaps of trouble when it has come to perfecting a model to garner advertising revenue from ads placed inside actual videos (as opposed to just on top or next to the content). For a site built solely from UGC, getting users to swallow advertisements in the form of interjected pre-roll clips can be extremely challenging. However, the question is why? In an age where advertisements are part of our daily experience with media (television, radio, even movies are lined with advertisements from top to bottom) does a site like YouTube have reservations about sticking a quick pre-roll on some very popular clips? It can be argued that the answer to this question lies in why Web 2.0, and UCG in particular, gained popularity so quickly. And that answer is: user control. YouTube visitors have become accustomed to controlling every aspect of their interaction with the site including content generation. Each user chooses what videos to display, what parts of the video to watch, how many times they watch a given video back to back, what to rate the video, if they want to include a new video in the YouTube database…the list goes on and on. Thus, the presence of an unsolicited and unavoidable clip of video, however brief, represents a huge deviation from the current YouTube experience. Furthermore, as most YouTube videos are short form, the chances of an advertising pre-roll doubling the total length of the entire clip are fairly good. While this may seem like a non-event at first glance, consider the following scenario: A designer who used to sit next to me at work had the habit of looping YouTube music videos so he could listen to the same song over and over again while working. He said the repetition helped the music fade into the background so he could concentrate on his work undistracted by lyrics while simultaneously enjoying the creative stimulation of the music’s rhythm or beats. However, had this music video been proceeded by pre-roll this guy would have had to listen to the same advertisement each and every time the video looped. I would venture a guess that this would have broken him of his music video looping habit, but in doing so, this advertisement would have effectively altered the way he as a user interacted with YouTube.com. In short, it would have stunted his ability to customize his user experience. While such an argument presents a conundrum for YouTube, their most recent approach to advertising seems to display sensitivity to the fact that users are used to exhibiting control over the content they interact with on YouTube. In short, YouTube is testing a system where users are required to watch a “promoted video” before viewing certain clips. However, the user can select from a series of options for that promotional video accompanied by ratings for each option. Furthermore, the user can elect whether to watch one pre-roll or several different stream ins during the duration of the video. While users are still being forced to interact with unsolicited content, the perception of controlling the interaction is held intact. For the full story check out the link below:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/15/youtube-choose-your-own-adventure-emphasis-on-ad/
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