YouTube video content expected to include ads

Pre-roll and post-roll ads are expected to begin appearing in YouTube video content later this year, said a spokesman for Google.

by Helen Leggatt

Speaking at the MipTV conference in Cannes, Patrick Walker, European head of video partnerships at Google, predicted that 2008 would see “real money coming in” from video advertising.

According to Walker, both the broadcaster and YouTube would share revenue from the advertising.

According to an article on BusinessWeek.com, Google/YouTube are currently testing “short bumper ads” to precede videos, and similar length ads at the end of the broadcast. The ads, which would be 30-seconds in length, could account for a considerable percentage of the total video running time if it’s a short skit.

Even YouTube’s Chief Marketing Officer, Suzie Reider, has personal concerns that pre-roll ads could adversely affect user experience. "I don't think that a :15 or :30 pre roll before a :27 piece of user-generated content is going to be a great experience," she said, via Clickz. "A user's experience in YouTube right now is so pure we don't want to get in the way of that."

A recent poll by Harris Interactive found that, perhaps not surprisingly, YouTube users aren't happy about the possibility of ads appearing in video content. Nearly three-quarters of frequent YouTube users said they would visit the site less if it started including short video ads before every clip.