Comments on: YouTube users can pick their poison with ads

Viewers can choose to watch an ad prior to a video starting or allow several ads to appear during the video.

[karpenterskids]

Hulu has offered users (from time to time anyways) the option to choose between watching a long ad at the beginning, or shorter ones as the video plays, for quite some time.


Just thought it's worth mentioning.

[Michichael]

Wow. Touting a feature that it's competitors have had for months as innovation and new? This isn't very Google-like.

<Sarcasm>They're taking a page out of Apple's playbook. </sarcasm>

[Belinus]

Time to stop using YouTube if they're gonna be forcing ads on us. I don't blame them for wanting to monetize it in some way, but did they ever stop to think one of the reasons YouTube is so popular is because it is ad-free?

[Michichael]

*was

[Brian]

The only YouTube videos that are ad-free are from the users that have not been promoted to partnership.

[pjscullion]

Hulu seemed to do this for certain advertisers. For example, the XO-laptop commercial with the adorable little African boy never offered this option, but the Honda Odyssey commercial did.

IMHO, I find the longer ads before the video to be the way to go. I am a has-been pirate (yarrrr, let's go plunder Sweden for booty!) and TiVo addict, yet I'm still willing to sit through a minute-long ad so that I can watch my Family Guy episodes hassle-free. And by "willing to sit through a minute-long ad", I (of course) mean "Get food/beer/check Facebook/read e-mail while the ad passes."

[Michichael]

Pretty much. Advertising, at least to me, is a dying industry in a society that doesn't even retain them. It really needs to rethink the way it works - instead of forcing itself on the consumer. That usually just makes it discarded in memory all the faster.

[Brian]

Ads have always meant 'bathroom break' for me.

Advertisers simply don't understand.

[jessiethe3rd]

This is going to open the market up to other options. I had ads in youtube videos. This is your life with Google... one... long... ad. This is how Google makes its money - being force more advertisement into your life... No place to hide... to place to run.

[Burnsie001]

Don't watch Youtube anyway since it requires Flash player to be installed and that is such a horrible product from the consumers view tha tI just won't install it..

[donyazyd]

I thak you for this fantyfabeluos site

[TheMarketingIntern]

At least YouTube is trying, but this concept STILL delays my access to video content. Someone has to come up with a better solution. I want my content 1) free, 2) uninterrupted, and 3) immediate. What about that is so difficult to understand? Why can't we monetize web video without violating any of these?