Yesterday, Google YouTube
officially debuted its new in-video ad delivery system.
After weeks of
experimentation, the first embedded video advertisements went live.
Trawling my selection of news feeds this morning, I came
across several rather amusing bits on a spat (well, maybe not a spat,
but I’ll put the word to use here anyhow) being had between
VideoEgg and YouTube.
The former is more or less accusing the latter of stealing
its
overlaid-ad thunder.
The latter’s response, well, actually
there’s been no response, from
what I gather.
And I can’t forget to relay some info from the
head
honcho at TechCrunch, where he mentions a couple of notices received
from AdBrite
and Brightcove,
which both
claim to have begun doing what YouTube’s now doing many
months ago.
Who Gives A ****
To all of which I myself respond with: Who gives a (bleep)?
It’s one
thing to call dibs on something worthwhile, meaningful, something that
people actually enjoy. Like who offers the best video quality
(definitely not YouTube) in the biz. Or who has the best UI.
People
don’t enjoy advertisements. They tolerate them. So all the
huffing and
puffing over the way ads are delivered to Web video viewers? Why? What
for?
Fools. Fools, I say.
Bravo to Brightcove for being “
well
ahead of the market,” introducing video overlay ads
way back in autumn of 2005. Bravo. Aces. A round of applause, please,
everybody.
And AdBrite. They’ve spent a year working the
overlay angle. Way ahead of Larry and Sergey. Props to ‘em
for that.
VideoEgg’s been doing the same for about a year as
well. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
Please Note: We Don’t Care!
Seriously, this talk about who was first out of the gate is
just
pathetic. (By the way, if you’re interested in knowing the
true origin
of overlay ads, the Om in GigaOM has two words for you: broadcast
television.)
The only benefit to the dispute for us sideliners is to see
geeks
fight, and personally, that doesn’t sound all that appealing,
considering the improbability that fists will ever be raised, so I
think I’ll call it for what it is: pointless nonsense.
To the CEOs making noise on the matter, I’ve a
simple request. Argue
over something us consumers of your content actually care
about.
You
know quite well we would like very much to see the fewest
advertisements possible. We hate ‘em. You probably do too,
even though
you’re required to use them to keep your businesses
running.
The fact
that you’re arguing over who among you first brought
“overlaid” ads out
for public consumption makes you come off badly. Stupid, even. So
stop.
It makes us like you less, and some of you could use as much
liking as
you can get.
Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
