Comments on: YouTube to lose 75% of their frequent users if they pre-roll ads

By: Thord Daniel Hedengren

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:31:53 +0000

I’m not saying they’ll lose 75% of their frequent users, the study is.

By: TWB

TWB — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:59:26 +0000

It takes a pretty big leap of faith to jump from a study like that to the conclusion you draw.

By: Thord Daniel Hedengren

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:26:25 +0000

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: Chris Baskind

Chris Baskind — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:06:13 +0000

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