| Kippreport.com

Future moving more to ‘Skippable’ ads: YouTube

December 6, 2012 12:28 by M. Aldalou

Mourad says that over 90 percent of local advertisers in the country are on YouTube and that it’s becoming more difficult for marketing managers to explain why they are not. The confidence – for whatever Kipp’s opinion is worth – is staggering. “For most, it’s a no-brainer; if a user skips your ad then you don’t pay for it. The advertisers are happy and so are the users for being given the choice to skip,” he says.

More importantly, what the option to skip ads really does is force agencies and advertisers to get to the point quicker and become more creative and careful when designing ads. The Google team wanted to demonstrate to content providers that they really can make money if they take the right approach. “We’re not a content company and never will be,” Mourad says. “But we did invest $100 million this year behind original content to demonstrate to people that they can make money off it.”

Not all videos on YouTube are allowed to contain ads. For instance, you wouldn’t normally find advertising on a normal user generated video – unless of course it began to pack hundreds of thousands of views. Still, it strikes Kipp as a shame that user-based content that goes viral may go unmonetised because advertisers may still be focusing too much on the content and not the context.

“In an ideal world, no matter what the video is – a user is a user,” he says. “The reality is that we accept the fact that advertisers still focus on content but that’s why we have to try and give them the best of both worlds. When partnering with MBC to stream all episodes of ‘The Voice’, we got one major sponsor because in this case companies pay for the content. Ideally, it is moving towards context and further away from content.”

Finally, when asked briefly about the ITU conference currently taking place in Dubai, Mourad said that when it comes to innovation the worry is not about Google paying taxes, it’s really about how new players will survive. “Innovation is not a worry for Google but the outcome of this could really stifle innovation for the industry. The government bodies making the decisions don’t really know too much about the Internet so I just hope they don’t make any dangerous propositions.”

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Tags: google, Youtube, youtube uae