Instead of pre roll or post roll, Google and YouTube come up with an overlay with integrated player. For now it’s only with select partners on select videos (ie, the commercial ones). The really interesting question is when/how this will scale to the tail. I’ll comment on it more later, for now, read the Merc…
And take a look at this pic:
and this explanation of how it works from the overview sent to me by YT:
And again, I have to ask: Given that Google’s mission statement has claimed for years, and currently continues to claim, that “Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find”, what sort of ads will be showing on what YouTube videos?
Note the logical construct that Google uses in its language: IFF. If and only if. Two way implication. Show an ad, only if it is relevant. Only if it is relevant, will we show an ad. Basically, no ads without relevance.
So what sorts of ads are relevant when I am watching an episode of Family Guy? What does a “relevant to what I wish to find” ad look like, in that case?
There can be a lot of ads that are demographically targeted. Sure. That is what television already does, and why you see toy commercials during morning cartoons, but not during late night episodes of “Lost”.
But demographic targeting is not the same thing as relevance.
So I have yet to hear a coherent explanation from Google on this one. Can anyone give me pointers, to where they may have talked about it, and explained it a little more? How does relevance fit into this whole picture? Because by Google’s own words, without relevance there is no ad.
If I am watching Family Guy, and Brian starts singing “Peanut Butter Jelly Time”, am I going to see an ad overlay for Jif or Skippy? That’s the only possible thing I can think of at this point. And even that is not truly relevant to what I wish to find, because Brian really not talking about peanut butter and jelly; the song is more of a metaphor for saying “I’m happy”.
JG, It will probably be much simpler than that. It will not show you an Ad about jelly or about happiness for that matter. It will show you links to buy the Family Guy Full Season Set or something of this sort (probably through Google checkout).
I suggest people not fight with the concept of Ads, especially the way Google is implementing it. These Ads are providing millions of users free services. Enjoy it!