YouTube’s Interesting Advertisements
We’ve all happened upon a 30-second, unskippable advertisement while perusing YouTube. However, in recent times, this seems more infrequent-did something actually change, or are our memories simply false?
The typical ad that one would find on a site like Google works based on clicks; each click on an ad costs the advertiser some amount of money. However, if someone simply sees the ad but doesn’t click on it, no revenue is generated; the advertiser doesn’t pay the site anything. YouTube’s new model follows a different system: since YouTube ads show up as a (sometimes) skippable video, the advertiser pays for each video view. If a user watches an ad for at least two seconds, that counts as a view which costs the advertiser some amount of money. The odd thing, however, is that the “skip” button that appears on some ads appears after five seconds. So, a user who skips an ad due to whatever reason still counts as a view.
While seemingly illogical at first, many people are happy with these changes; if a skip after five seconds didn’t cost the advertiser anything, then the advertiser received five seconds of free advertising. To make up for this, YouTube changes the amount owed per view, increasing the amount for each full view and decreasing the amount for each skip. So, has the amount of annoying unskippable ads decreased? It’s hard to say for sure, but based on YouTube’s ad changes, it seems likely that the allure of unskippable ads may have fallen off.
Source: https://adage.com/article/digital/brands-skipping-payment-youtube-s-ads/312963/