Ugh, another Video Ad?!
As if physical and televised advertisements wasn’t annoying, but YouTube has always had ads either on the side of their website, or at the beginning of each video you watch. In this article, it talks about how effective video advertisements are. They are effective because video ads track the location and user behavior to make sure the ad the viewer watches is relevant to the video itself. In addition, instead of watching an ad throughout the first couple seconds to solely promote that specific product, they are now suggesting to making the ads longer with a storyline so that viewers can relate and then proceed to hopefully buy the product. They also mention how important positioning of the advertisements are because depending on where an ad is placed, the viewer will either skip it or watch the whole thing. It was found that “ads in the middle of a video reached a completion rate of 97 percent, ads at the beginning of a video reached a 74 percent completion rate, and ads at the end of a video reached only a 45 percent completion rate” (Bolluyt). This makes sense for the ads in the beginning and middle to be higher than the ads at the end because viewers want to get through the ads to get to the actual content. Once the video ends, the viewers have no incentive to keep watching, so it’s easier to just ‘x’ out of the video than to give profits to the advertisement company by watching their mundane ad.
In class, we mention how depending on the positioning of the ad (first page, second page, third, etc…), the valuations will either be higher or lower. Those on the first page of a web search are obviously more expensive then those pages following the first because there’s a higher chance that people will see the ad if it’s on the first page of the web search. Also, we talked about “pay-per-click” and that is exactly what YouTube does. By inserting an ad into the video, the viewer is essentially helping out the advertisers by clicking the video (click) and watching the ad (pay) until the actual video content begins. If not in the beginning, the videos where sponsored YouTubers rave about a product is basically endorsing the “pay-per-click” concept. The advertisement company sponsoring the popular YouTuber is using his/her popularity to grab the attention of viewers/potential buyers.
Source:
http://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/why-annoying-online-video-ads-actually-work-on-you.html/?a=viewall
http://digiday.com/platforms/youtube-moves-outside-overlay-ads/