YouTube: don't like video ads? Now you can skip them

by Gareth Jones, revolutionmagazine.com 12-Nov-09, 11:12

LONDON - YouTube is allowing consumers to skip through pre-rolls on the video-sharing site in an effort to improve the user experience and encourage brands to create better ads.

The Google-owned site has added ‘skip' buttons to selected pre-rolls as part of a strategy to allow advertisers to pay only for the ads consumers watch in full or engage with in some way.

The initiative suggests that Google is not entirely satisfied with the quality or performance of pre-roll ads on YouTube despite recent moves to boost the amount of inventory on the site.

"We want to learn who skips, which ads they skip, when do they get skipped, and how can we use that skip as a quality signal," Phil Farhi, YouTube told clickz.com.

YouTube has been sceptical about pre-roll advertising ever since introducing it last year, claiming that users abandoned video clips at a rate of 50 per cent.

Instead it has been pushing its InVideo format, a semi-transparent overlay that appears while video clips are playing. However, brand advertisers continue to request in-stream formats.

By allowing internet users to skip ads YouTube is hoping that brand-owners will focus on improving the quality of their creative. "We want to educate advertisers about what makes high-quality and engaging ads," said Farhi.