Continuous Improvement?
Posted August 24th, 2007 by Char Lyn
Have you noticed the new features on YouTube? I love the new beta page—it’s cleaner and just feels better in my browser. Today I noticed that they’ve also added forward and back navigation buttons to the recommended videos at the end of each clip. The forward button also has a timer feature that lets you know when the presented clips will change. I’m thrilled about these nav buttons since I can never mange to click on an interesting video before it is replaced by a new one. They’ve also added thumbs up/down buttons to the comments to help filter out the drivel, which I greatly appreciate.
Successful Web services like YouTube have learned that they have to continuously improve in order to stay relevant. But, they also have to earn revenue. In addition to other improvements this week, YouTube has rolled out a new advertising format that overlays the videos like a news ticker at the bottom of the video. Its use is very limited right now, and I had to watch a number of videos before I found one with the new ads. The blogosphere is voicing its opinions about these ads in posts like these on Profy, CyberNet News, and Jaffe Juice.
According to Mashable, Google is making the ads optional for the content owners. If these ads survive the current maelstrom of mostly negative reaction, Google could potentially use the format to make revenue from the extremely popular embed feature, which currently allows people to put ad-free clips directly on their blogs and Web pages.
Corporate America has capitalized on the platform by sponsoring vloggers, posting their commercials, and buying banner ads. The new ad format may increase commercial use of YouTube and water-down the user generated content, but as the largest video community on the Web, it will continue to get the eyeballs marketers covet.
Entry Filed under: Advertising, User-Generated Content
4 Comments Add your own
1. Max | September 6th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
C’mon Google, you’re smarter than this!
Promotional tactics like these inVideo placements drive me nuts. I go to YouTube for entertainment. The opportunity for marketers is to entertain me, and blend their brand into the entertainment, not to go back to their old habits of forcing boring product promos down my throat.
2. Tak | September 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am
…or blend their entertainment into their brand in the case of Blendtec.
3. Char Lyn | September 11th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Max and Tak, you guys have a point about how marketers should engage their customers. But, the Googles of the world make their money from advertising. No ad dollars, no goggle. If you want to get rid of ads all together, there will need to be a new business model to support the technical innovations.
So, here’s a question for you. Would you rather have the overlaid ad, or pay for a YouTube subscription like you pay for cable?
4. Yianni | September 12th, 2007 at 7:12 am
I say keep the ads. The only subscription I’ve paid for has been WSJ and that’s because I was forced to by a vicious economics professor. And I hear Murdoch will be waiving that soon.
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