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.
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