YouTube Lets you Now Skip Ads

YouTube has added a new feature today that allows you to skip past the TrueView ads that show on some content.

This may seem a little odd and you might expect the advertisers to hate this, but it’s actually the opposite as advertisers at the moment are all for it. Basically, when you start viewing a video that has an ad playing before it, you have a countdown timer that counts from 5 to zero. Once at zero you can click to skip the ad, or not click to view it.

The key here is that advertisers are only charged by Google for ads that users watch to the end… ie, they pay for ads to be displayed in full to people who might actually be interested and purchase something. If the user skips the ad then there’s a good chance that user wouldn’t buy anyway.

Another option being rolled in is the ability for the user to select from one of three ads when the video starts rolling.

It will certainly be interesting to see how things go for the advertisers and user experience with this in place.

Via: TechCrunch

Speak Your Mind