Some Details On What Kinds Of Ads YouTube's Currently Testing

Posted by: on April 25

Just got offstage from moderating a panel at ad:tech, during which YouTube’s Chief Marketing Officer Suzie Reider echoed published reports (and general industry chatter) that the company’s now testing ads around the videos on the ridiculously well-trafficked site. She also gave some additional details on what may be coming and when.

In testing stages now: “short bumper ads,” as in quick introductory ads preceding YouTube videos, as well as similar short-form ads after the videos have ended. (In other words: pre-roll and post-roll ads, although it at least sounds like they’ll be much shorter than what you see on sites run by traditional media players.) Google/YouTube obviously doing lots of studies on user behaviors—I am pretty sure the phrase “eye-tracking studies” was uttered at one point—to see what will fly and what won’t. But, interestingly, Reider expressed personal concerns that pre-roll ads could hurt the YouTube user experience.

Presumably we’ll know how this all shakes out this summer, when Reider expects said ad solutions to go live and be public.

Also during the panel:

Wired Digital’s General Manager Kouroush Karimkhany said that he expects Wired.com to be the first Conde Nast site to adopt Creative Commons standards, and then let users modify and play around with certain kinds of Wired content. (He pointed out they recently did this with a magazine article. Interesting stuff, both of those notions.)

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