Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee profiles YouTube’s move into in-video advertising. We covered the move by YouTube to offer revenue sharing with its top content providers May 4 and I noted at the time that there was no sign then of any pre-roll advertising. There still isn’t.
The new in-video Google/ YouTube advertising is immediately comparable to Adbrite’s InVideo service. Text ads are imposed over the video in both. The similarity ends there. Where as Adbrite’s offering provides a text link that follows through to an external site, YouTube’s new offering is essentially video-in-video. Clicking on the advertising text results in a video advertisement appearing on top of the player.
It’s a marked step forward in Google’s quest to better monetize YouTube, but I remain unconvinced. The sample shot at NewTeeVee says it all for me. An advert is provided at the base of a My Chemical Romance video for Cingular/ AT&T. Cingular may be the new AT&T but what in the world does it have to do with My Chemical Romance? Absolutely nothing. There’s no context, not contextual matching and delivery. Are users viewing this video or other music videos likely to be interested in an optional advertisement from AT&T, one that interupts their viewing?
In some ways it’s classic Google fence sitting. They need to make better returns from YouTube but they seem reluctant to impose pre and post rolls on hosted videos. Instead they are now offering a half way option, one that they may argue empowers viewers with choice, but one that in effect will only allow viewers to avoid viewing ads.
Pre and post rolls, when done right like the Dewars Whiskey campaign at the Onion News Network work and work well. More importantly they can’t be avoided.
No one likes watching commercials and yet it’s commercial advertisers that provide the money to sustain much of our existing forms of media. YouTube may be a poster child of Web 2.0 and user generated content, but economics can not be avoided. Google still has a long way to go in recouping its 1.5 billion dollars. The new advertising service might bring is some extra revenue, but I just can’t see it being a massive winner.
NewTeevee has the scoop? Someone already reported this on May 4th: http://motiono....s-in-video-ads/
Andy
I saw it at NewTeeVee but if its been elsewhere I’ll amend the post.
EDIT: now updated and thanks for the advice
I agree that post or pre rolls make much more sense. Not only does the ad have nothing to do with the video, but the ad then obstructs the video that you were originally watching. The only way that I could see anyone wanting to click on the ads is if there is big incentive to do so (like watch the ad for a 20% off code).
I think a 3 second pre roll would work best. It would bring small businesses to get branding that they cannot afford to do on old media. Smaller websites could roll out small 3 second pre rolls in a style similar to adwords ordering. Buy as many as you want, and place them in certain categories.
Hey, no problem man. Just wanted to let you know I had seen it a few days back =)
I disagree with your conclusion that advertising must be “unavoidable” to be effective. In fact, Google’s biggest success to date, Adsense, relies on the fact that sponsored results are separated from the organic search results on the side, so that they can easily be avoided if the user does not wish to look at them.
In this analogy, your suggestion of embedding the advertising into the content, such as using pre-rolls and post-rolls is actually equivalent to the failed model of paid placement in the search results.
Showing the advertising in an ancillary position to avoid cluttering up the content that the user actually wants to see is a characteristic Google approach that has worked well for them in the past. By doing this, they don’t risk the quality of the experience, which is a key to growing the number of users even further. “Contextualness” will no doubt follow soon as the ad system rolls out of beta.
Michael
Most top Adsense publishers run their ads in unavoidable positions, blending used so that people don’t realize they are looking at an ad (mostly) so they click on it..and Google knows this as well, it’s why they dropped the colored margins on standard adsense units. These ads stick out like a sore thumb, people will know what they are and will avoid them like they use to with Adsense units that weren’t blended.
I’d also note the difference in target. Video ads aren’t’ about driving a visit to a page, they’re about brand/ product awareness and a sales pitch. The click then pitch them on an external site model doesn’t fit in with this form of advertising. It works with text but video is a different beast.
I don’t think AdSense is ‘avoidable’, you see it, you just don’t have to click it. I think that’s analogous to pre-roll. You’re not faked into thinking it’s part of the video, and you don’t have ot click it.
The over-roll, or whatever Google’s doing, in my opinion, is far more distracting, popping up when I am in the middle of the video I want ot see. I would much rather watch a few second ad, exhale, and enjoy the video I came for.
As for context, you’d think they could use the tagging already in place to target at least a little. If the tags are trusted enough for people to search and organize with, I think they’re good enough for ad targeting. Nothing too extravagant, and maybe they already are and there just aren’t that many advertisers in the test.
I’m with Tung.
I like Youtube and Google, but one very big mistake they are making is to NOT involve ALL content providers. It really upsets me when companies get big they forget about their roots. For example, the low budget, home video content is a very big part of how Youtube became so popular, now they are only going to offer ad revenue to its “top content providers”. That’s WEAK! Regarding video advertising, just like most things on the net, someone will figure out a way to give video advertising to ANYONE for FREE…. OH SNAP THEY ALREADY HAVE THIS SERVICE!
VIDEOGAVEL.COM
Social media has changed the way that consumers use the web, and increased the number of people who feel comfortable creating content. Blogs, personal pages, video and picture sharing create so much content that it is literally impossible to consume it all. Google indexed 2.6 billion webpages, and adds thousands of blog posts, images, and webpages a day.
YouTube has over 36 hours of footage uploaded every day. In order to extract the content that users want from the web, aggregation is needed. Whether using a RSS feed aggregator such as Google Home or a social aggregator like digg.com, the web’s users rely increasingly on other sites and other people to bring them the news that they want.
A comprehensive social media site that puts all of the functionality of popular social media sites into one location has never been developed. Until now.
Using today’s greatest web technology to bring tomorrow’s internet to you, YouGetIt.com is hyper-local, local, and national media like no one’s ever seen it before. Aggregates the functionality of some of today’s top social media websites, with features of social networks, video and photo sharing, online auctions, classifieds, online storefronts, and more.
The poster child for Web 2.0 isn’t YouTube
Web2Corp’s YouGetIt.com is the pioneer on this field.
Steve
I just checkrd out YouGetIt.com, nice!!!
Famous last words:
“[...], but I remain unconvinced. The sample shot at NewTeeVee says it all for me. [...] Cingular may be the new AT&T but what in the world does it have to do with My Chemical Romance? Absolutely nothing. There’s no context, not contextual matching and delivery.”
I think this goes back to mathematics. YouTube now serves as many videos per day as Google has searches (ca. 100 million). I think it is very interesting that Google is trying to monetise this via click-throughs. Think about it: Google generates $10bn a year from search. Even if YouTube was only 10% as successful, that would still make Google a substantial amount of money .
Regarding the ‘context’. I think the interesting question is: how can the advertiser choose/bid on which videos to advertise on? By type of video? By target group? By popularity???
However, the real question to me is whether there are a substantial number of click throughs from the videos or not. It would be my guess that the CTR is lower, the only question is: by how much. I guess even 10% of Adwords would be fine, 1% probably not.
AdBrite’s InVideo is a neat service. I’ve been playing with it on my videoblog. I like the way they have pre-roll, post roll, a persistent ad in the player, and do it all in a way that doesn’t disrupt the viewing experience.
The problem is lack of context. The text ads on my site match the content closely. They perform pretty well. The ads in the video are generic, and they perform terribly.
If Google matched its text ad inventory to the tags in the YouTube videos, they might do well. Doesn’t sound like that’s what they’re doing right out of the gate.
Here’s a sample:
http://waterwor...d-two-proverbs/
Youtube sucks anyway, http://www.cavenger.com is better
To whomever pretended to write as Chad Hurley earlier in the postings – at least get the founders of the company right. Jawed Karim is another co-founder of YouTube. I know for a fact that all three of them work very hard. It’s not their fault that political and cultural climates in their previous companies changed that made them desire to do something else with their lives. Considering the cultural impact that YouTube has had on the world, I think you should give them a little more credit.
test
Hey steve,
yougetit.com is a bad concept, because you cant be all things to all people. Want an example?
Who has a larger market cap (1) Yahoo! a portal or (2) Google just a search engine?
When Google started trying to be a portal by offering lots of services they have shown that they can not make much money from the other services.
Also note: Youtube was smart to buy because it gives them another brand like google that means only one thing videos. If google = search then youtube = videos.
Craigslist = listings so google base goes nowhere no matter how many people they can push over there.
When you try and be all things to everyone then you will most definately fail. Because you end up being nothing to anybody.
Dale @ 15
Your site is the most pathetic link I’ve ever seen on Techcrunch. If you are going to put up a link to your website, please build something better than that piece of #hit. That was just horrible. Spamming at its worst.
Give Google a break kids. They are working to monetize YouTube without scaring away all the users so it is obviously going to be a process of baby steps.
I’m not sure why the TechCrunchies feel so adamant that YouTube video ads need to be context sensitive. Have any of you ever even watched television and noticed the commercials they play?
For example: when I watch ESPN, I see tons of ads for mortgage refinancing. ESPN has nothing to do with mortgages so why all the mortgage ads? Well, advertisers and television stations understand that a large % of ESPN viewers are at a point in their lives where they might want to refinance a mortgage. The advertisements on television generally aren’t CONTEXT sensitive, they are DEMOGRAPHIC sensitive.
I expect the same thing to happen with YouTube ad, and apparently so do the wizards at Google. Sure, some of the ads should be context sensitive where it makes sense, but in general ads will be demographic sensitive.
Duncan, why are you so quick to assume that these ads won’t be contextual. First of all, someone caught this on a whim – it appears to be in early evaluation and there isn’t likely a large pool of diverse advertisers yet. Do you believe a diverse advertising base for a new medium appears overnight? I don’t.
Personally, if there’s one place where I don’t mind watching ads, it’s YouTube. Not an ad in the traditional sense, of course. But rather choosing to watch an ad (eg. sony brevria) because I just finished watching the video I intended to watch and the ad looks interesting.
@walkable, don’t feed the trolls. The fake Hurley posts have been around for at least 10 months on numerous sites’ comment sections. Note the number of self-promoters here? The ~$1.5B youtube acquisition got lots of folks attention, and they’re stupid enough to think they’ll duplicate the effort in some way. Quit being a wanker and trying to defend the founders, they’re doing fine and don’t need your help.
by the way, i use http://www.savetube.com to save youtube videos.
Hey, Michael.
http://www.YouGetIt.com is the nation’s first local social network that spans across the nation. With a local social site built in each of the 10,000+ zip codes, YouGetIt.com has created local web sites for nearly every community in America. As every user logs on and is automatically presented with his or her own local news, alerts, traffic, weather, businesses, e-commerce opportunities and more, YouGetIt.com creates a unique online presence that ties together the functionality of social networks, video and photo sharing, blogs, auctions, stores, and more. YouGetIt.com is the social media aggregator, providing users with the tools that they need to get what they want.
New website, new concept in development stage yet.
It is need for it ?? I’m sure consumers and businesses will decide that.
It seems like a poor way to monetize YouTube. Why not run a context sensitive ad below the video you’re watching? You have this perfect media most people watch in a tiny window, it’s such a perfect opportunity to include more. Could even allow advertisers to pick when to display their video and with which clips. Just imagine watching a music video and right under it is a video commercial for Pandora or maybe iTunes.
GJ
http://www.60in3.com
Hey, Michael (second round)
First, Google and Yahoo (the obvious leaders) have never stopped trying
to add as many diminisons/functions to their portals as they
can…..Google is buying everything they can and Yahoo, is by far the largest
portal in the world based on many facets/features added to their property.
So the comment made here (about being everything to everyone) is a
direct conflict of their stated point.
Secondly, YouGetit’s application and argument is based on the reverse
methodology of those large properties who are using 10+ year old
technology (based on relevancy whereas stringing series of words or phrases
together to get user what they are ultimately looking for) Yougetit does
the complete inversion of that by starting from a local base and
expanding outward. More importantly, our philosophy is that local has never
been done right or you would be landing on your bandwidth provider’s,
telco’s or cable company’s page everytime you log on, and not Google or
Yahoo’s! So do you think AT&T, Comcast, Roadrunner, SBC, Sprint, Verizon
are stupid….no, but they did let that very control point of the
internet slip thru their hands about 5-10 years ago.
To test the waters, please do some real research and look at;
a) Google’s acquisition and development strategy currently underway
b) Yahoo’s growth strategy of portal development worldwide
c) Microsft’s plan to partner with as many levels including failing
traditional media outlets
d) The Telco and Mobile carriers plans to take back the portal business
back to their level where the service originates
e) Popular Media’s plans to partner and create segregation among media
(music and movies) which will be determined with Digital Rights
Management structuring.
Once you understand that, then and only then….do you have the resources to evaluate YouGetit’s focus and direction.
I agree with Mike B, sort of. Demographic and potentially behavior inputs are more useful for advertising against videos. Context may not work or only in certain niche situtations.
http://www.yout...h?v=V_N7BmX-gKA plz comment and rate its funny