Skippable ads on YouTube FTW!

Happy New Year!

Did you ever find yourself spewing all the cuss words you could think of when YouTube ads pop up or play before you can get to watching the YouTube video of your choice? They drive me nuts when I just want to get to the video and when the ads are irrelevant to me… 15 or 30 seconds never felt so long. Well, here’s something I’m personally really looking forward too – news that it won’t be too long before consumers will have the option for skippable ads on YouTube.

The new feature has been slowly rolled out to YouTube’s millions of users since November and some of you might have possibly tried the option already (if so, I’m jealous because I haven’t). Called TrueView, the feature allows users to have the option to choose three ads to view for short videos (InStream) or skip them, and the option to have “ad breaks” on longer ones (InSlate). It has not been confirmed though if the ads will be “skippable” for the videos with longer content, as written in the AdAge.com article about it.

This feature actually isn’t all that new to the world of online video-sharing as Hulu has released a similar feature called “Ad Selector” for its users back in 2007. It doesn’t allow users to skip ads, however, as well as limits the feature to just 10% of the watched videos.

The “skipabble” ads feature is backed with a big endorsement by VivaKi, the research and planning arm of Publicis Groupe. Vivaki estimates that this “choose-your-own-ad” format will pull in $100 million into the online video ad industry. If that happens, YouTube partners will also greatly benefit from it with more revenues. Which is good news for content creators like myself!

TrueView is also good news for advertisers as YouTube will only charge them when a viewer watches 30 seconds of an ad to its end, and not on impressions. To be fair to advertisers too, YouTube will allow them to increase or decrease their ad spending based on their business or marketing objectives.

So if you’ve ever been bothered by those annoying ads, then don’t despair as you’ll have the option to shut them down as you please. And then maybe more brands will get on the bandwagon of hiring YouTube Partners like myself to promote and endorse their products and services for them in fun and entertaining ways which are much more effective anyway!

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YouTube Comment of the Day:
RaidenRedux has made a comment on Father Lover (Mother Lover spoof): Spoofs like this usually suck, but this was hilarious. 5 starts!