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Ads coming to YouTube videos?

August 22, 2007 › Sandy McMurray | comment

According to this report, Google plans to display advertising over YouTube videos using a semi-transparent overlay that will fade after a few seconds.

Shiva Rajaraman, product manager for YouTube, said internal tests show more than 70 percent of people give up when they see a pre-roll. By contrast, less than 10 percent decide to close an overlay, which they can exit by clicking on an "X" in a corner. The overlay format also gives advertisers more flexibility, he said, because they aren't constrained to keeping a video ad at 15 or 30 seconds to avoid defection. Because a viewer chooses to watch, a video ad can run much longer - clicking on one pre-launch overlay launched a 2-minute trailer for "The Simpsons Movie."

I'm definitely among the 70% that click to close a video when it begins with an ad, but I'm not sure how I feel about the ad overlay idea. I guess we'll see how it looks.

August 22, 2007 › Sandy McMurray | comment on this item