“Skippable” ads are being introduced by YouTube later in the year. This new format will enable users to skip the pre-roll ads that are included within the video, whilst advertisers won’t be charged a cent for skipped ads. According to Google’s senior product manager, Baljeet Singh.
YouTube began studying skippable ads late last year. “We’ve been playing around with it for the last three quarters and seeing really great results… skip rates varied dramatically based on the quality of the ads.” Mr. Singh said.
Here is an example of an ad playing and the option to skip on the top right hand side of the video.
Skip Youtube Ads
YouTube also offers users a choice of ads they can see within a video, particularly in longer videos.
Youtube ad selection
Based on strong data correlating skip rates with ad quality, Google will encourage companies to create higher quality ads suited for their audience and hence improve effectiveness by this user option to skip.
However for the moment, Singh says that YouTube is still “experimenting” with more models for YouTube and its focus is still behind advertising.
How do you think this will impact on your viewing experience?
Since Google Inc. bought out the free video-sharing site YouTube in 2006, the company behind the world’s most popular search engine has been trying to break even on its US $1.65 billion investment.
This was always going to be a long-term strategy, as Google’s amazingly lucrative business model is based around offering free and valuable services. Gmail, the online atlas Places, and most recently the social media platform Buzz, are all examples of Google products that don’t cost their users a cent.
So charging to watch videos on YouTube was never a possibility that was seriously considered, either by Google or by the web public. Google makes money not by selling products or services, but by selling advertising space on the web pages under its control.
Google AdWords is the search engine giant’s major breadwinner, and Google has successfully integrated this system with YouTube. Advertisers pay to show their video ad as a “Promoted Video” within a regular YouTube clip. Placement targeting can refine this process for a higher advertiser ROI, as ads are automatically matched with videos that contain related content, and so more likely to be shown to people who already have an interest in what is being advertised.
Still, the system is imperfect. A YouTube user watching clips about different dog breeds may not necessarily be a dog owner, so showing that user video ads for dog food or dog cleaning services is wasted on both the site visitor and the paying advertiser.
Google has always claimed to put the experience of its users above the wants of its advertisers, so it’s unsurprising that the search engine has announced its intent to integrate “skippable” ads within its YouTube advertising platform.
So soon, if You Tube site visitors don’t feel that a particular video ad is relevant to them, they don’t have to watch it. However, Google is playing fair by its advertisers too and not charging for ads that are “skipped”.
Google expects that the quality and relevance of ads will improve as a result of its latest initiative, and the accuracy of its ad tareting system will increase. If so, then the move will surely be beneficial to enhancing both You Tube user experiences and advertisers’ return on investment.
In the coming weeks, Australian advertisers will be able to conveniently drive more viewers to their YouTube videos with the use of their AdWords account. Known as Promoted Videos, it was launched as a search advertising program on YouTube so that you could promote your video to users. But in the past year it has expanded to a level where Google will now make it easier for you to set up and manage your campaigns through AdWords
This integration will allow you to create campaigns and buy ad space from the one place, with the assistance of familiar campaign tools. From today, this will be available in Canada, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. You can learn more about this here.
To get a better understanding of Promoted Videos, watch this!
It was posted recently in the New York Times that there is talk about Google’s very own YouTube striking up a deal with the worlds three largest entertainment corporations Lionsgate, Warner Brothers and Sony to negotiate a deal to offer full length feature films though its site.
The agreement is being kept very under wraps as both Google and the entertainment companies are reluctant to make any comments on the agreement though YouTube has announced that it does hope to look into expanding their already great relationship with the movie studio and increasing the variety of their video types and selections they currently offer the community.
What we look forward to hearing next is clarity on the pricing, release dates and availability of these video releases. Keeping in mind that YouTube is currently in a struggle to find a way to do better than break even, Google seems confident that this change is a large part of their foreseen changes to improve a return on investment. In conjunction with this is Google partnership with Universal music providing music video on a separate site names Vevo.
Though there is yet be an announcement date for either of these additional services one thing is for sure and that is Google is certainly taking evasive action to get the video sharing community site back into the green.
Everyone knows that Google wants to make money from YouTube and they finally figured it out. Recently, YouTube announced they will offer the ‘Download’ option to their users. BUT the catch is, you will need to pay a fee to download popular videos.
They are working closely with several of their partners to offer either free or paid downloads, giving their partners the option to set their own prices and for them decide how the downloadable video will be licensed to the user.
The videos will be available in the MP4 format, and can be copied to other providers. Downloads are already available from Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA and UCTV, while Household Hacker, Khan Academy and Pogobat are offering paid downloads for a dollar.
In another of the recentefforts at increasing revenue from the site, Google’s YouTube has announced on both the official Google blog and the official YouTube blog the debut of click-to-buy options on videos.
When you view a YouTube video with a great soundtrack, you often see comments from YouTube users asking about the name of the song and where they can download it. Or when users watch the trailer for an upcoming video game, they want to know when it will be released and where they can buy it.
Today, we’re taking our first steps to providing YouTube users with this kind of instant gratification, by adding “click-to-buy” links to the watch pages of thousands of YouTube partner videos. Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features. Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products — like songs and video games — related to the content they’re watching on the site. We’re getting started by embedding iTunes and Amazon.com links on videos from companies like EMI Music, and providing Amazon.com product links to the newly released video game Spore(TM) on videos from Electronic Arts.
An example of these buttons can be seen below the clip here on a screen cap from the site;
YouTube has begun experimenting with a different angle on post-roll adverts. As we posted a while back, videos that have adverts enabled currently have optional overlay videos that would pause the clip you are watching and play an advert video before taking you back to the place where you left off - a feature that was only kicked in if a user clicked a button to play the promotional video.
The difference now is that at the end of the clip, regardless of choice, a video clip related to the optional overlays will play automatically. I first read about this on Epicenter on the Wired blog network who had this to say;
This may seem to contradict Google’s justification of overlay ads earlier this summer when they said that 75 percent of their viewers were dissatisfied with pre- and post-roll ads, but it looks more like a simple way to get a few eyeballs at otherwise ignored content. The new ads still only run on a small portion of videos, and even if the drop off rate is high, if a few people hang on to watch the previously promo’d ad at the end, it’s still more viewers than would have seen the ads otherwise.
As reported on Google’s official Mobile Blog, the company has started trialing ads for the mobile version of YouTube.
You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan. This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube — it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.
Google has been trying desperately to uncover a successful revenue model for YouTube since purchasing the company back in October 2006. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has been quoted in the press as saying finding the right form of advertising on YouTube is the “holy grail”, and this represents another step in the quest to tap the potential of YouTube’s billions of monthly page views.
Access to Google owned YouTube was cut off on Sunday in China due to the uploading of graphic images and videos from Tibet, where trucks were pictured burning and monks were getting drafted through the streets by Chinese soldiers.
Blocking Western based websites is quite normal for China, where the government has always controlled the flow of information amongst its residents.
I came across a great little clip from YouTube in a post on Exposedseo.com in which a rapstar in the making by the name of Poetic Prophet raps about the basics of starting a PPC campaign. Very entertaining and educational also - check it out below;
