Suzie Reider, head of advertising for YouTube, announced at the Ad:Tech conference in San Francisco that YouTube will start to include advertisement in their videos some time this summer.
“We’re looking at executions like a very quick little intro preceding a video, then the video, then a commercial execution on the backside of the content,” Reider said.
About the only thing that could be called certain in video ads is that the 30-second ad before a video won't work. Nothing else has been figured out for certain yet.
Jason Hirschhorn, President of Sling Media agrees saying that "pre-rolls" won't work on the first video watched. He added that there has been some favorable reaction to ads that are placed between the first and second videos played.
Don't let anybody fool you though, the video ad market is almost entirely in the experimental stage for what will or won't work. It'll take time to work it all out.
When asked about the potential backlash of users to commercials, Reider said that people like to watch creative commercials as much as they do regular content. The idea is to make it as compelling to watch as uploaded video.
Reider was also asked about the time frame it would take to start generating billions in revenue that would make it comparable to television. Her response was that it would take three or four years.
I think that comment is way overly optimistic. But if there isn't too long of a learning curve, and not a lot of consumer resistance, it just might reach some pretty high numbers in that time.
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