YouTube Testing More Commercials

YouTube has been running ads at the bottom of videos for awhile now. I find that they are unobtrusive and I have no problem clicking the quit "X" button which removes them from the video. Greg Sterling over at Screenwerk has a short article about a YouTube advertising test.

For context: I'm firmly in the less advertising is better camp. I think that we're bombarded past all reason at this point with advertising and honestly I think the overuse is making all consumers more and more resistant to advertising. Yes it still works or business wouldn't do it, but how many consumers are with me on the idea of seeing less advertising?

Putting on the business hat though: Show me that it's killer effective to run forced ads and I have to be there, using it for my business and for my customers. We gotta eat, right?

YouTube has been doing some limited testing of pre-roll advertising; pre-roll ads run before the content that you want to watch. People don't like them much and I have to wonder what the long term effect would be if they rolled them out, en masse tomorrow?

I've given up on "regular TV." We unhooked the cable and only use our AppleTV and DVD's for entertainment. What that's done is educated me that commercial free entertainment is much more enjoyable. After a year, I cannot watch regular TV and enjoy it. I want to be entertained, not have to watch commercials for stuff I'm mainly not interested in…

Makes for a conundrum – I have to market to grow my and my customer's business; advertising is a big part of that. How do we make advertising less intrusive and more targeted to when people are looking for a product or service?

This is one of the big reasons I love SEO, Video and PPC advertising. They reach people when they are wanting more information -now- about that product or service – no intrusion!

Hopefully these tips have been helpful. What do you think?