April 27, 2007 | Friday
The trouble with YouTube
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Marketing |News |Online Sales |PPC |Search Engines |Google |SEO
I visit YouTube at least once a day. I embed YouTube videos in my work on at least a weekly basis. I enthuse over the latest funny or disturbing YouTube video in offline conversations with friends. My point: I love YouTube.
That said, Google’s got a problem on its hands with its recently purchased video-sharing site, one that is not going to go away anytime soon.
Red Herring (via Philipp Lenssen) reports that YouTube will begin inserting ads into its videos as early as this summer.
Yet, at this late stage, they still haven’t decided exactly how they’re going to do that without alienating millions of customers who have come to expect ad-free video sharing.
Earlier this year, Google’s Penry Price said the company doesn’t believe in pre-roll ads (which play prior to the good part of a video - you know, the bit you actually want to see). This after an overwhelming majority of YouTube customers said they would avoid the site if pre-roll ads were inserted into videos.
The problem with pre-roll is glaringly obvious: It is an interruption and intrusion on the customer’s experience. It annoys the customer. The flaw in the business case for pre-roll doesn’t need a lot of fancy charts and graphs to become apparent.
Google/YouTube knows this. Yet the Red Herring piece reveals that they’re still considering going with it. Why? Because nobody watches post-roll ads - the ones that are stuck on after the good bit.
THAT’s their plan. “Format A gets ignored, so we’ll go with Format B, the one that causes everyone loads of aggro.”
It’s worse than that, though: Google says they will possibly roll out both pre-roll and post-roll ads on all videos. What is the user supposed to think? “Excellent - something annoying and something I can ignore, both on the same video!”
Google may be renowned for its innovation, but it is really going to need to pull out all the big brains on this one. YouTube has never been just TV slapped on a web server. It’s an inherently different, user-controlled experience. “Interaction” is now so over-used by new meejah types that it has nearly lost all meaning, but it is all too apt when analysing YouTube: The passivity of television viewing stands in great contrast with the incredibly active, engaged way that people truly interact with YouTube. The interruptive and intrusive nature of broadcast-style ads just will not work in that context.
So, yes, Google has a very big problem and I will watch with interest as they try to solve it. Still, this is yet another instance that highlights exactly why search engine marketing is so powerful: It connects people who are actively seeking information about products and services with the companies that can fulfil those needs. No interruption, no intrusion, just pure engagement. Google knows that the only reason it could afford to buy YouTube is because search engine marketing has been such a successful business model for them. Marketers should keep that in mind, too.
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