TV is the Best Model for YouTube Advertising

Google bought Youtube back in Oct of 2006 with one goal in mind, how to take their advertising success with search and transform that into a new new medium: online video. They faced only one real challenge – how to make video ads less annoying than what we have been seeing for the last few years. No one wants to sit through those lame commercials on Forbes.com or CNET reviews, we do so only because we have to to get to the interesting content on the other side.

News came out yesterday that Google may have found a solution and has already begun testing a 10 second spot that runs during the videos. They act much like the ads that appear for a few seconds at the bottom of your television screen while watching a show the ones that highlight another show coming on next. – Except there is one major difference, you have control! You can choose to close the ad by clicking on the little “x” in the corner of the translucent overlay. They are definitely on to something here it remains to be seen how many of these impressions lead to clicks but in my mind they have already hiked 90% of that mountain – they made them less annoying. No welcome screen sponsored by some company. No text saying your video will begin in 15 seconds while we first load a video you don’t care about. Bravo Google/Youtube you are giving us back control of just a few of the 300,000 marketing messages we see each day at the same time making them a little more transparent.