Sunday, October 30, 2011

Online Commercial Experiments

Ads always get in the way of the show the viewer is trying to watch. Hulu and Youtube are experimenting new ways to make the ad watching process somewhat easier. These websites business models really depend on advertising and cannot afford to lose viewers just because of annoying advertisements. Hulu and Youtube are giving the viewer the option to chose which ad to watch. For shorter videos, Youtube gives a skip option. Advertisers are only charged when users watch the whole video. The newest strategy for advertising is creating that people want to watch or even look forward to watching. Commercials like Old Spice and Dos Equis send people to the Internet to watch them over and over again. Viewers have to make a trade-off of what advertisement they want to watch and it sometimes can be difficult. I for one choose not to even mess with online video, except clips on Youtube. My family chooses to pay for a DVR so we don't have to mess with online searching. I think DVR is also better because no Internet is required and there is no buffering to deal with. Also ads can be fast forwarded through in a second.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/business/on-hulu-and-youtube-commercials-by-multiple-choice.html?ref=business

2 comments:

woodyleonard said...

I really liked your blog! I also agree that youtube advertisements are really annoying and sometimes I don't even watch the video if an ad pops up. But, I think you tube has been the reason behind commercials being more interesting and funny because advertisers want people to enjoy them enough that they WANT to watch them. I liked your examples of the Old Spice and Dos Equis commercials because they are both intertaining and I have looked them up on you tube voluntarily. I have also heard rumors of TV providers making it not possible to fast forward threw recorded TV shows so you have to watch the commercials, have you heard anything about this?

Zeev F said...

I strongly agree with your blog. ads are becoming more and more of a problem. i believe that there should be ads because thats the main way they make money but, there should always be a skip button. It is a waste of time and energy to watch commercials on the internet. Old spice and dos equis are being smart, putting out bearable entertaining commercials, i feel like that will help their business.