Recently, I’ve been noticing myself becoming more and more irritated when I have to watch advertisements before every single video online, whether it be on YouTube, or if I’m catching up on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy on abc.go.com. Although I do love the classics, like the Old Spice ads, as in the image posted above, after time, it becomes irritating. Even in the past couple years, and this is my mom’s hugest pet peeve, advertisements are springing up for SEVERAL minutes before movies in theatres! What has the media come to that we are being exposed to so much advertising?
I wanted to take some time to look into YouTube advertising, however, since this class in about marketing on the internet, and learn about the how’s and why’s of what many believe is a bombardment of ads for the few minutes of satisfaction in our videos that we are actually waiting for.
To put things in perspective: YouTube gets over 1 billion views per day, which means that if YouTube was a search engine, it would be the #2 largest, nearly 2X bigger than Bing and Yahoo search combined, and roughly one third the size of the dominator Google! We watched this past year as the hit song “Gangnam Style” soared over hits in the past with celebrities who created record breaking YouTube sensation videos like Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” Imagine the exposure that the advertisements received that were lucky enough to land a spot before one of these hits – seen by HUNDREDs of millions of people. Since Google has taken over YouTube, they’ve gone to great lengths to make advertising on YouTube as easy and customizable as creating ads in AdWords. The options are nearly as numerous, with the two major options being display ads and video ads.
• Standard Banner Ad – These are just like the regular Google Display Ads, available as standard banner ads and rich media ads. You can use topic categories and keywords to specify where you want these banner ads to appear. Bright, colorful images grab the targets eye and are the best technique to reel people in.
• In-Video Overlay Ads – In-video overlay ads appear as pop-ups within existing contextually targeted videos that are targeted by selected queries. Destination URLs within in-video ads can go to locations outside of YouTube.
I personally find pop-up ads extremely annoying, but there is no doubt that you have to see them when they pop up, even if you x them out immediately. There are several different kinds of video ads, but it gets very technical, and there are plenty of sources to view if you are interested in them in the future. Advertisers use YouTube as a portal to their audience because fo its popularity, and know that it is a useful tool to expose their brand, create brand awareness and brand image, as we discussed in the mid-point of the semester, as well as potentially launch a new product to a young and impressionable audience. With so many different ad formats to choose from, YouTube advertising is a playground for marketers looking to experiment with ad formats and gain exposure in a predominantly untapped market. The bottom line is that advertisers will continue to fund sites like YouTube and find the best ways to reach customers, and we as consumers need to be prepared for it.
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Source:
http://vrudolp1.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/advertising-on-youtube-a-popular-portal/