With YouTube’s advertising revenue falling short of what Google anticipated, does this mean that the company will be forced to change their stance on pre-rolls?
Google have spent the last 20 months trying to wade through the multitude of problems that is advertising on YouTube, with the initiative nicknamed “Project Spaghetti”. A big problem came up last year when Viacom Inc sued Google over distributing unauthorised clips of films and TV shows. This led to a significant reduction in the number of clips which Google then put up to have adverts linked to them, leading to a loss in revenue.
The Wall Street Journal reported rumours that in an attempt to increase ad-revenue, YouTube are considering implementing pre- and post-roll advertisements. This would go against the ethos which YouTube has always projected, along with afflicting the trust of their user base. In previous tests to see how well the users responded to pre-rolls, it was found that 75% of users were dissatisfied with them. However, YouTube has to serve the best interests of its shareholders, and although pre-rolls may annoy 75% of viewers, we imagine they satisfy 100% of advertisers.
As pointed out by our friends over at NewTeeVee , maybe YouTube will just be preparing us for the old TV format, but on our new TV systems. With YouTube preparing new interfaces and gizmos for their upcoming launches on various set top boxes, it makes sense for their videos to have pre-rolls attached to them, just as normal TV has always has adverts in-between shows.
If they go ahead with pre-rolls, will the revenue gained by Google be enough to offset any future copyright infringements, and how will it equate to the broken trust of the viewers? And are advertisers prepared to apply branded pre-rolls on questionable UGC content?
You can read a highly comprehensive article on the problems facing Google and YouTube over at The Wall Street Journal .
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July 16th, 2008 at 2:07 am
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