YouTube to lose 75% of their frequent users if they pre-roll ads
Well, this is what a study made in December says anyway, according to Adotas.
In late December, Harris polled 2309 individuals in the US. 42% said they had watched a video on YouTube, and 24% saying they were frequent users, but watched less than an hour a week. 75% of those frequent users said they would be less likely to visit the site if the videos contained pre-roll ads.
YouTube might very well be heading towards pre-roll advertisements to help pay the bills, and also share some dime with the content creators.
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That’s what they say. How they behave is another thing entirely.
I’ve done dozens of radio research projects where people say this and that, but behave in an entirely different manner.
Nobody has *ever* copped to liking commercials. Ask a listener how many minutes per hour of commercials they’d tolerate on their favorite station before switching their allegiance to another, and you’ll hear some lowball answers: 3 to minutes, perhaps.
In fact, most stations play 10-12 minutes of commercial per hour — more, in many cases — and these same respondents are still listening.
I don’t think Google plans to preroll everything — just the premium original content with which they’ll be sharing revenue. So the Harris survey instrument is about as useless as it is predicable (“Commercials? Hell, I’ll watch MORE YouTube if they have commercials!”).
One thing I think prerolls will hurt is viral placement on blogs and websites. There’s no way I’ll embed a YouTube video that carries a preroll spot. And I *will* behave as I claim. ;-)
/Chris
By Chris Baskind on February 6, 2007 2:06 am
You’re absolutely right about studies like this. Talk is cheap and all that, and I agree with you overall.
In my opinion, the Revver model – rolling ads after the content – would be a much better solution. Sure, not the same high impact, but you’re not alienating visitors, and the viral effect would still be more or less intact.
By Thord Daniel Hedengren on February 6, 2007 2:26 am
It takes a pretty big leap of faith to jump from a study like that to the conclusion you draw.
By TWB on February 13, 2007 10:59 am
I’m not saying they’ll lose 75% of their frequent users, the study is.
By Thord Daniel Hedengren on February 13, 2007 11:31 am