My first Blog post, and it's on something most people hate, oh boy...
Whatever, lets
get this show on the road. YouTube ads, some are okay with them, while
others either don't care or hate them. Point is, i've seen various
ways YouTube could make the ad system a really solid part of the whole,
and make ads a more enjoyable part of being a YouTube user.
1. Decrease the frequency of ads
-As useful as
some ads can be, facing facts, no one wants to see an ad on every second
video we watch. In fact the overbearing frequency at which ads occur is
part of why many hate or don't care. We watch YouTube to watch videos,
not ads. While ads are okay, having too many of them ruins the concept.
Take it slow, have an ad every 20 to 30 videos or so, that way ads would
be much less intrusive to the over all experience.
2. Limit repetition
-This one goes
hand in hand with #1 and can make things worse. Seeing an ad once is
usually enough for us to understand what said ad is advertising or
conveying, we don't need to see the same ad five or more times. Sticking
other ads in between repetitions don't work if there is only one ad for
every two of the same ad. Repetition can be used right, as a tool to
remind people of something they have forgotten, but over use it and
people will stop caring and forget anyway, this can be fixed by spacing
out repeated ads, say repeating an ad every 10 ads or so.
3. Tailor ad content to better suit the platforms YouTube is available on
-This one is a
bit more complex, you see, i feel ads would work better if their content
was more suited to the platform you happen to be watching YouTube on.
More game-related ads for the consoles, more general ads for pc and mac
(and other OSes), you get the idea. Ads can be made more interesting and
appealing if they are relevant to whatever platform they are on, this
is why xbox ads work, yes there are a lot of them, but they are all ads
for games and sales regarding games, as well as new games coming to the
market soon. This kind of tailoring ensures that ads will always be
directed at the right kind of communities or people
4. Balance ad length with ad content
-This is
another complex one, but is simpler to see once you understand. Have you
ever encountered one of those boring ads that was too long and could
be summarized in a shorter time frame, or one of those ads that is just
too short and doesn't give the info and details you may be looking for?
Then you know about the problem i'm talking about. Some ads are far too
long and take too much time showing off the product or service they are
advertising, when it could easily be done in a few minutes, while other
ads are far too short and don't go into enough detail and whatever they
are advertising, leaving us just confused. This can easily be fixed
by taking a look at what you are advertising AND the target audience,
this should help balance length with content a bit more.
5. Ads that don't advertise something are not ads.
This is an easy
one. Over the years, i've noticed several you tube ads that weren't
even ads because they weren't advertising anything. Long story short, if
it ain't an ad, don't make it an ad.
6. YouTube videos/Videos from other sources are not ads either
This is another
easy one, but more annoying. I can see how YouTube uses its own videos
as ways to advertise channels or uses videos from elsewhere ton
advertise something, but the fact of the matter is, there are better
ways to advertise, on YouTube, we have user created channel ads (which i
will discuss later down the list) which eliminates the need to use
videos as ads, and yet they are still being used in that way which is
utterly baffling, you can't just pull a random video from a channel to
use as an ad and expect those watching to understand what the channel is
about, let the person who created the video tell you what the channel
is about, there is a reason its called show AND tell not show or tell.
The same goes for videos as ads for other sites, you have to tell us
about your product, you can't just show us, in the same way you can't
just tell us either, show AND tell, not one or the other.
7. No ads should EVER be unskippable
Now this is a
bit of a personal gripe, but never the less, i find it VERY irritating
when an ad pops up that, for whatever reason, can't be skipped,
especially when said ad isn't interesting or is about something i don't
care about. By taking away the "Skip Ad" button, you are essentially
forcing the viewer to watch the ad. You cannot do that, as that
will inevitably cause the viewer to lose interest in the product being
advertised. Let the viewers decided whether or not to view or skip an
ad, don't force it upon them. Thankfully, the only ads that can't be
skipped thus far are usually short, maybe one to two minutes max.
However, if this is not dealt with, we could end up being forced to
watch ads that are considerably longer, which could make this much more
serious.
8. There should NOT be more than one ad per video.
This is another
issue born from a personal gripe of mine. Recently i've noticed that on
some of the longer YouTube videos (15m or more), YouTube felt the need
to insert MULTIPLE ADS into the video at various points, and while i can
see the reasoning behind why they did this, but they are going about it
the wrong way. While having multiple ads in a longer video allows the
advertising people to advertise more than one product, but it breaks
down with the basic fact that, as viewers, we DON'T WANT to have ads,
skippable or not, constantly intterupting whatever video we are viewing.
If we're halfway into watching a 30 minute long video, we don't want an
ad to interrupt that viewing experience. Long story short, There should
only be ONE ad per video with an ad, and it should ONLY be BEFORE the
video, NOT during, and NOT after.
9. Place more emphasis on User created YouTube Channel ads
This is a
somewhat complex part of the list, but stick with me and you'll see
where i am coming from. I firmly believe that placing higher emphasis on
and thus showing more user channel ads than others would better help
build the community, allow me to explain.
i) Person A Makes an ad for his channel, YouTube shows this ad to Person B.
ii) Person B also happens to have an ad that Person A sees.
iii) Person
A and B end up subscribing to each other, and the people subscribed to
them see that they subscribed to someone else and decide
to check it out.
iv) The
subscribers of Person A and B end up entwining the two channels
together by entwining their subscribed users.
I call this the
cross connecting effect. It may seem strange but is actually an almost
nessicary step in building a strong community. It works the same way
making stronger rope usually does. Individually, small thin ropes can't
hold much and break easily, but when you entwine them together, you
create a stronger rope. Online communities can work in much the same
way, weak and easily broken on their own, but strong
and unbreakable when entwined together, it is for this very reason the
Steam community is so strong, its made of several
smaller communities all entwined together to strengthen the whole. This
effect can make the difference between a channel on YouTube dieing off
or becoming better. Now, i realize the example i provided was a bit
large, but this entwining of communities happens every time users
subscribed to one channel subscribe to another because the one channel
showed off the other to the users, the entwining of Game Theory and
Culture exchange is a perfect example of this.
Whew...
That was a long explanation, i apologize if you couldn't follow. Long
story short, user created ads help to further strengthen the community
the way twisting together strands of string makes a stronger rope.
And that
finally brings me to the end of this blog post. To summarize, Ads can be
used as a tool to deliver info to us about things and products that
might interest us, but they become nothing more than a mere annoyance
when used wrong. Ads could be pleasant and nice, but only if we fix
the problems YouTube ads are suffering from. If anyone from Google or
the YouTube reads this, I implore you, PLEASE take what i've said into
consideration, it would make YouTube a much nicer place to be.