aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
YouTube’s answer to video ads
The three things I hate about ads: irrelevance, interruption, and clutter. The YouTube answer doesn’t violate even one.
It’s totally terrific:
Finally, in a long-anticipated move, YouTube is debuting its solution to video ads — and no, they’re not pre-rolls. The new ads are semi-transparent overlays that cover the bottom fifth of the screen and then disappear after 10 seconds. If you click it, a video ad will play in the same player, only a slightly smaller size. At the end of the ad — or when you click the close icon — the original clip will resume playing. So far, the ads only apply to partner videos (and as of this writing, only a handful of them), and they’re selling for $20 CPMs. Take it for a test drive with the clip here (notice the yellow marker in the timeline when you play the clip). Also, the ads do not play on embedded clips — just when you play them on YouTube. Smart.
Very!
More impressions: I’d like to see advertisers pay out for BOTH branding impressions and clicks. And a link to the ad should be included at the end of the clip. I won’t be clicking mid-clip, and when I navigate back, I don’t easily find the ad. I want a direct (graphic?) link to the ad somewhere easy.
