Why you should love Youtube advertising & other things you hate on the internet

We often forget that the thing we don’t like about something is also thing that makes it possible. The annoying part of something good, is usually what keeps it alive and provides us the gifts that surround it. One case in point is Youtube advertising. It’s so annoying isn’t it, to spare that 5 seconds before clicking out, or that entire 30 second advertisement you can’t even click out of – how dare they. What we ought do is imagine for a minute that Youtube never found its monetization model. Then what? Then it probably fails, doesn’t exist and instead of having pretty much all forms of education and entertainment on demand on any topic, any time, we’d be stuck with a few free to air TV channels, home shopping, and marginal pay TV subscriptions.

The cost of the benefits is rarely a heavy price to pay, especially with new technology and disruptive innovations which need to have lower barriers to inspire adoption. And speaking of disruptions – the advertising we have to endure is not nearly as bad as it was in the TV era. Sometimes it’s worth remembering that misdirected hate is both a waste of energy and a short sighted perspective.

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4 thoughts on “Why you should love Youtube advertising & other things you hate on the internet

  1. Video ads at “Youtube” is appropriate. I rarely watch video when I’m online. I don’t mind advertising text & relevant images on the side of the browser, to pay for the service, like print media. I HATE!!!!!!! animation & videos writhing in my vision while I’m trying to read! And it’s too risky to “click through” even if I wanted to support such distracting visual pollution.

    Is there evidence that animated ads get more custom? They LOSE mine!

    (1000 Bonus poxes on the Flinders st. train station service that now only offers WiFi to devices that can watch their video ads & the typically clueless Govt. citing that as how to cover the rest of the city!)
    “Free” is never free, whether paid directly, through taxes or through ads which add to the cost of the product.

  2. I have no problem with the ads at you tube. I think any service that is provided free of charge, as we expect most things to be these days, is going to need some sort of advertising supported income stream. The conundrum for both the media supplier and advertiser is to get the correct balance between getting your advertisement noticed and becoming so intrusive that you lose interest in watching the video.

    I clicked out of a Yahoo site this morning because they demanded that I watch a 30 second advertisement that had absolutely no relevance to me before I could watch the video about a news story. No opportunity to escape the irrelevant content.

    Our free to air TV stations are also losing audience by overloading their programs with so many ads that people lose interest in the show. Recent reports that they are requesting to be able to increase the ad to program ratio even further will only serve to erode their dwindling audience even more.

    Clever advertisers and broadcasters make their advertising entertaining and not to intrusive, so that you engage your potential customer, not annoy them. Sometimes less is more!

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