Google is continuing to struggle to make YouTube profitable. All those eyes watching the site should be worth a mint, but turning viewers into revenue isn’t as easy as it sounds. Maybe giving users the choice of which adverts to watch is the solution?
Monetizing YouTube
is by far the biggest online video site on the Web. The number of viewers watching videos every day is huge, as is the number of videos uploaded to the site every day. But despite these statistics, YouTube is still not profitable, and maybe never will be.
The success of YouTube is actually part of the problem because it means the costs involved in storing and delivering all that data to all those people are mind-blowing. Another problem is monetization. The vast majority of YouTube videos cannot even be monetized, and delivering ads on the ones that can is a tricky balancing act.
Ad Experimentation
Most monetized YouTube videos now feature small banner ads which cover the bottom half of the video being played. But these can be irritating, and can thankfully also be closed. Which is what I do most of the time, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
YouTube has experimented with other types of ads over the past year or so, including the much-hated pre-roll video ads which you have to sit through before getting to see the video you originally clicked to see. And now comes a new experiment, which gives viewers a choice of adverts.
Viewer Choice
The experiment is being carried out on some long-form premium content at present. Viewers are presented with an option – to either watch a full-length pre-roll ad before the video, or to watch several shorter ads throughout the stream. An example given by Contentinople sees viewers given the choice between “an 83-second ad from Target or a 34-second ad from Tampax before the program, or four commercial breaks throughout the show.”
Hulu already gives viewers a choice of adverts, so it seems Google has copied, or at least taken inspiration, from its up and coming rival. Not that I’m complaining, because giving viewers choices is one advantage online video has over its offline alternative. And it’s an advantage that is good for all parties.
Conclusions
If the current experiment is successful then expect to see viewer choice rolled out to more videos on YouTube. But it’ll likely never reach non-premium content due to both its short nature and the risk of upsetting copyright holders if a violating clip makes any money for YouTube.
