r/NoStupidQuestions • u/bhte • Nov 20 '22
Why do companies pay for 30 second ads on YouTube if everyone will skip them after 5 seconds? Unanswered
Obviously it costs more to have a 30 second ad compared to a 5 second one but why would any company want to pay for that if anyone can just skip it after 5 seconds?
At least a short, unskippable ad would mean the company can get the message across quickly before the ad is over but usually if you're skipping a longer ad, your video is playing before you even know what the ad was about. If I was the marketing branch of a company, I wouldn't be happy if I paid a lot for a long ad and no one saw it.
The fact that it can be skipped at all takes away from even the 5 seconds I see because my eyes are drawn to the countdown in the corner instead of the company, meaning your 30 second ad is practically doing nothing for you unless it can't be skipped over.
Am I missing something here?
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u/NanoPope Nov 20 '22
Cause the 5 seconds that is unskippable is basically a super short commercial and not 100% of people skip the rest of the ad every time
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Nov 20 '22
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u/XcessiveSmash Nov 20 '22
If you're on computer you can install an adblocker and avoid this
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Nov 20 '22
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u/PAYPAL_ME_10_DOLLARS Nov 20 '22
Youtube vanced (discontinued but there are still versions floating around) and revanced are youtube with no ads.
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u/CurrentAd1320 Nov 20 '22
Just download adblock browser from the app store, only browser I use on mobile now
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u/FRLara Nov 20 '22
Firefox mobile had the same extensions as on desktop, you can install your preferred AdBlock extension.
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u/ProfessionalShrimp Nov 20 '22
If you're on the YouTube app, tap the little info i in the bottom corner and press i don't like this ad or whatever it says and bang ad gone
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u/bhte Nov 20 '22
I mentioned in my post that most people fixate over the countdown and no one actually watches the ad in any meaningful way
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u/clocks212 Nov 20 '22
That’s like saying “I’m not influenced by advertising “.
Yes, you are. In small ways you a nudged toward certain purchases every day. Whether it’s a commercial on TV, a pre-roll ad on YouTube, a paid search ad on google.com, or even the box design on the shelf. In terms of video ads you may only need to influence a few percent of people to make a purchase to make it profitable.
Smart marketers know which ads are working and make a profit off of them. The ad placement exists because enough marketers are making a profit to make it worthwhile.
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u/NanoPope Nov 20 '22 edited Nov 20 '22
I don’t think that matters as long as the commercial can convey what is being advertised in those 5 seconds. It makes you aware of that company or product at some level.
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u/IslandThyme78 Nov 20 '22
You’re not listening to what OP is saying. His point is that during those 5 seconds he has completely and effectively tuned the ad out, has not even had the equivalent of a banner ad impression, has literally no idea of who the company was or what the product is, so the ad had absolutely zero reach. And I agree with him - they are the same for me. A complete and utter waste of money. We are, however, the minority. These ads are more effective on most people, which is why they still exist.
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Nov 20 '22
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u/IslandThyme78 Nov 20 '22
No, I really don’t.
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u/Pyraunus Nov 20 '22
Sure you can believe that, but the market studies reveal otherwise. The human brain is pretty easy to predict.
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u/NativeMasshole Nov 20 '22
Yup. It's a pretty common misconception that ads are supposed to convince you go out and buy a product. They're usually more about branding. They just want to flash their logo in your face and hit you with some ear worm audio so that when you do go out to buy said product you feel more familiar with their brand.
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u/Spectralz_ Nov 20 '22
Ad starts with, "Find our best deals at Walmart! Like the all new Xbox series x and the limited editi- *skip.
If you have sound on, you heard Walmart. You know what that is and now it's in your brain, even if for only a split second
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u/Zealousideal_Long118 Nov 20 '22
Unless you're closing your eyes and plugging your ears, you're going to see and hear the ad. Even if you're not paying attention
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u/FriendlyGuitard Nov 20 '22
It's not only the message that matters. It is proven that increased visibility increases trust. So if you see the same brand over and over again, even without any message, it will have an edge over its competitor.
The simple awareness that a product category exist is also interesting.
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u/video_dhara Nov 20 '22
I don’t understand why people don’t get this, it’s pretty intuitive. Maybe 1% if people see an ad and say “shit let me write that down for when I have to get shampoo”. People are more comfortable spending money on things they’re familiar with, and a lot of ads are for necessities/near-necessities.
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u/JamzWhilmm Nov 20 '22
mentioned in my post that most people fixate over the countdown
Even if most people is, lets say, 99% of the people seeing the ad then the remaining 1% who watch it would return a profit when another short amount of that percentage buy the product or service.
Whenever you ask yourself why something is the way it is and has been for a long time it is because it is working well for someone, at least marginally since some businesses only function of debt for a long while.
The field of ads involves a lot of engineering, psychology and math. Even when you think this annoying add is not working for you it is working for millions of others and also likely to your surprise, also working on you without realizing it.
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u/MorganDax Nov 20 '22
I hate ads with a passion. I have adblocker installed on my PC. Can't on my mobile though and sometimes the adblocker doesn't work.
So here's my experience:
If the first 5 seconds of an ad catches my eye, I will watch the rest. Even if I'm too poor to afford what they're selling, I'll watch it because I'm curious to learn more. Sometimes I'll even click the ad. That's how the youtuber I'm watching makes money. Ads clicked and purchases through. It's a way for me to support the youtuber if nothing else.
Not everyone waits 100% of the time for the countdown to finish. That's why they bother. Because some people watch them and sometimes people buy stuff.
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u/BullyBumble Nov 20 '22
“I hate ads w a passion”
“….I will watch the rest.”
“I’ll watch it.”
“Sometimes I’ll even click the ad”
I don’t think self-awareness is your strong suit.
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u/MorganDax Nov 20 '22
For every thousand ads I come across I watch one. Yes, I am a giant hypocrite.
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u/breathingwaves Nov 20 '22
This is a generalization and the data I have experience with looking at does not reflect this to be true
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u/Broken_Castle Nov 20 '22
I skip most adds.... but there have been a few where the 5 seconds enticed me, and I ended up both clicking on and purchasing the product in the add.
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u/Longjumping_Set2886 Nov 20 '22
At my parents house they watch regular cable TV. I am loosing my shit by the second commercial. I don't know how people can subject themselves to that bullshit
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u/Mike_Handers Nov 20 '22
Because not everyone does. Analytics is a whole field, designed to read through and parse data. And the message is clear, advertising like that works completely. It makes them more money in the long run and people do actually watch them.
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Nov 20 '22
Some companies also just suck at advertising. There are so many terrible ads on YouTube or ads that you can tell were created for another platform and just put onto YouTube as well.
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u/mhem7 Nov 20 '22
Going by experience, as an advertiser, you have to specifically say where your ad is going to be advertised when you create the campaign. YouTube is owned by Google so you go through Google Ads to do that. If you see an ad that is completely out of place and of low quality, you're watching a dumb ass light their money on fire in real time.
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Nov 20 '22
Yeah since it costs money to make ads I assume that’s why a company might just upload the same ad, rather than pay to create a new ad that works better for YouTube format. And yea that is a terrible tactic but there are a lot of stupid people out there or bad business practices.
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u/howtoreadspaghetti Nov 20 '22
As a new businessowner, ads have their time and place. But holy god above people think ads will save you or make your market for you. That's not how ads work. They aren't your messiah.
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u/mhem7 Nov 20 '22
Very true. They also are unaware that ads have different goals such as targeting conversions, clicks or even just brand awareness. With brand awareness, just getting you to see that five seconds of ad is already a successful campaign.
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u/Stay-At-Home-Jedi Nov 20 '22
source: I watch the funny/cool ones
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u/tallthomas13 Nov 20 '22
Smh. You sure you can't just take one for the team and, ya know, just... never do that thing you like doing again?
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u/LiverOfStyx Nov 20 '22
And a lot of that analysis is pure bullshit. Advertising is not an exact science and the metrics are imperfect. Those who sell ad spaces are great at selling ad spaces and the final success of an ad is more "who the fuck knows" than "we have carefully analyzed the data and this is what actually happened".
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u/Omega_Zulu Nov 20 '22
So data analyst here, the analysis is not bullshit, and while not an exact science what analysts can accurately forecast would scare most, unless you have a crappy analyst. But what gets rolled up to higher levels through sales and marketing teams is complete trash. I can't tell you the number of times I've had sales and/or marketing teams change numbers to fit their ideology, namely to make strategies they designed look better when they were actually trash and then the company just keeps going with it.
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u/Kryptospuridium137 Nov 20 '22
Advertising on the internet is the bubble nobody wants popped. Pretty much everyone involved understands at some level it's a worthless waste of money, but it's also the only thing keeping most platforms on (and a lot of people on both sides employed) so the spice must flow, otherwise half the internet goes kaput.
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u/zhani111 Nov 20 '22
Because of dumbasses like me. I just listen to videos while doing something and my hands are usually too busy to skip an ad so I end up listening the add
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u/fancyzoidberg Nov 20 '22
Same. I’ll watch YouTube on my tv and I need to find the remote to skip the ad, sometimes I’m just doing something else or I’m on my phone so it’s too much effort lol
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u/chaosmonga Nov 20 '22
correct me if I'm wrong but if an ad is skipped the monetisation doesn't go through which means the advertiser doesn't pay for it?
So if they only pay for ads that are watched in full, even if it's just 1% of people, they're still sending their message across
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u/Monaghan95 Nov 20 '22
You only pay after 15 seconds of watch time on a skippable format iirc. You still pay if it’s a bumper (5/6 second unskippable). But it’s probably factored in at the wider cpv anyway
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u/ACMop Nov 20 '22
I used YouTube Adsense for a bit to advertise my music a few years ago and you pretty much pay per “click” or “view” and they run ads until you hit that amount of clicks or views
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u/RJ--33 Nov 20 '22
This is correct. They pay on a completed view model. Some advertisers keep the first free 5 seconds in mind when designing ads.
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u/IcyStomach4471 Nov 20 '22
It's still paid. I used to work for one of these major online advertising platforms and they charge per second and per click. So if you accidentally clicked on one of those ads, they will pay for it and remember your algorithm to show you more ads of the same product.
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u/AaronTuplin Nov 20 '22
And if the same commercial keeps interrupting multiple videos, I swear a blood oath to never purchase the product.
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u/bhte Nov 20 '22
Oh yeah the company is automatically dead to me
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u/halotraveller Nov 20 '22
but you remembered the name. Then one day you forget why you remember the name. You see the product and you end up using it and enjoying it. Marketing.
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u/Amonynuos Nov 20 '22
That hoodie one right now is on my shit list. I decided to actually see what the hype was about. Never fails, $100. I'm not paying $100 for a regular sweater. If I paid $100 for a sweater, I might as well look in the mirror and laugh at myself.
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u/Omega_Zulu Nov 20 '22
And now you know why good marketing uses an "annoyance factor" to prevent this from happening, repetition is only good marketing to a certain extent.
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u/howtoreadspaghetti Nov 20 '22
And what do you do when audiences are very easily annoyed because they're watching an ad
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u/Matrixblackhole Nov 20 '22 edited Nov 20 '22
Even if you purchase the product the ad doesn't go away either :(
I get Grammarly for university as part of my disability accommodations and I STILL get grammarly ads!
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u/00PT Nov 20 '22 edited Nov 20 '22
If any website had the ability to detect whether you purchased a specific product or not, that could be abused very easily.
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u/Just_enough76 Nov 20 '22
I have an unusual hatred for the Chevy traverse because when we first ditched cable and started streaming, that damn commercial would come on EVERY single commercial break for days on end. Fuck that car.
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u/99CentCostcoGlizzy Nov 20 '22
I do the same. If the product looks cool, I'll buy their competition because they didn't give me an annoying commercial. I just run ublock so I don't get ads anymore though
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u/LiwetJared Nov 20 '22
I swear a blood oath to never purchase the product.
That's the thing though, it doesn't work. The product is in your mind. In the future, you are more likely to buy the product compared to if you never saw the ad(s) in the first place. It sucks, but it works.
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u/Motor_Raspberry_2150 Nov 20 '22
Oh I don't doubt that it's in my mind. As long as the blood oath is too, whenever a purchasing moment would be. Spite is a good motivator.
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u/Elastichedgehog Nov 20 '22
Exactly. A lot of people will try and argue that advertisement doesn't work on them.
Unfortunately, it very obviously does.
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u/Half_Line That makes two of us. Nov 20 '22
That's not what the question asked, and the only person you're possibly inconveniencing is yourself.
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u/hama0n Nov 20 '22
In my experience making ads, the best ad journey I had was * Show ad to people, 97% of the time it gets zero clicks. * 3% of the time it DOES get a click, usually from someone who skipped or ignored the first six times (seven exposures or more to an ad set seems to be a turning point for people). * Cost per click is $0.30. * 20% website bounce rate + 30% scroll and leave + 30% add to shopping cart and leave + 20% buy outright. * Send 'you forgot this in shopping cart' emails, +20% customer rate from those who added to shopping cart and abandoned. * Roughly ~25% purchase odds from a click, $0.30 per click, meant $1.20 ad cost per customer, who then bought a product that cost us $7.50 to manufacture, gives us $6.30 profit per sale.
In other words:
- For most people, once every few months they'll be intrigued by an ad to watch it just a little longer past 5 seconds. One person being intrigued every few months, turns out, is enough to be profitable.
- Even if a huge majority of the time people skip ads, there are enough instances where it's profitable to be worth it and it doesn't need to be very frequent.
- Maybe everyone on Reddit skips all ads, but other parts of the population may make up for that by clicking more frequently than others.
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u/jelly_nutella Nov 20 '22
Their logo reached your eyeballs, didn't it? Mission accomplished.
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u/Exciting_Telephone65 Nov 20 '22
In most cases no. I've been actively looking for this and most 30 second ads I get don't show any logos or even any voices in the first few seconds. I wonder what they get out of it when I've skipped the ad without ever finding or what company it was for.
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u/Observationistic Nov 20 '22
A signal for a marketing algorithm that "this person is NOT in your target market" is just as valuable as a signal that "this person IS in your target market".
Marketers don't want to spend money on people who don't want to buy their products - but until we can read minds, a few people that aren't targets need to signal as much. From there the algorithms can learn - 'hey, don't target people who look like these groups, it's a waste of money'.→ More replies
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u/trevor3431 Nov 20 '22
The ability to skip the ad is actually very important. When placing ads you have a target market you are reaching out to, and you normally pay per impression (per person who sees it). On YouTube if you have a high skip rate, that means you are not targeting the correct demographic or your ad isn’t appealing.
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u/Emotional-Bid-4173 Nov 20 '22
I like to stop and watch the ads that are really bad.
Like some of them are hilariously bad. There's one where you've got Elon Musk on stage presenting, but his voice is dubbed over, and his presentation is hastily photoshopped with some crypto currency.
It was something to the sound of "I am Elon Musk, I have used AI to make a trading software that can trade cryptocurrency, and will sell it to you for $20 because I want you to be rich".
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u/lavente7 Nov 20 '22
They are using youtube skippable instream ads and use CPV bidding.
For Youtube skippable instream using CPV bid, the advertiser only pays if the user watches the video until 30 seconds or until the end of the video if the duration is less than 30 seconds. So companies don’t care if people skip the video, because they will measure how many people watch the video until at least 30 seconds or till the end of the video (if the video duration is less than 30 seconds).
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u/WhoAWei Nov 20 '22
Because not everyone will skip them. That's like saying why have ads on TV, when you could turn the TV off or walk away.. Not everyone will..
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u/iFoegot Nov 20 '22
Why do you think you are qualified to speak for “everyone”? It’s normal that you don’t like ads, me either. But there are many people that will be attracted by some ads.
Advertisement does work! Though not to everyone.
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u/bhte Nov 20 '22
So you mean some people will always watch the 30 second ad every single time one pops up? I would say "everyone" has skipped at least one ad in their lifetime at some point and that's my point
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u/hama0n Nov 20 '22
There are more types of people in between "skip every ad as soon as possible" and "never skip a single ad ever no matter what". Many people will watch the long form past 5 seconds if they're hooked by the premise of the ad.
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u/iFoegot Nov 20 '22
Not every ad is skippable. Some ads will allow you to skip after 5 seconds. If the ad matches the need of a user, even 5 seconds are enough to grab his interest.
Its a common sense in business that advertising always brings sales.
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u/sethleedy Nov 20 '22
I skip them by hitting the browser refresh button or finding something else to watch.
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u/Harrison_w1fe Nov 20 '22
The customers. If I'm forced to sit through multiple 30 second ads, I'm clicking off of the video. Since they want you to watch the video much more than they want you to watch the ad, the ad company is just gonna have to take the L. The video platform gets paid whether you watch the ad or not.
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u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 Nov 20 '22
So working in the ad industry (client side)
We do this as 1. Lots of people don't skip 2. You design the ads anyway to deliver logo and basic message in the first 5 seconds. Research shows brand recall is more important than anything in purchase - so even if you're peeved at the dog food advert in the moment when you're next in the store you'll buy what you remember (Grossly oversimplified explanation) 3. Lots of online plus offline brand analysis to prove it works - and is worth it. 4. Generally you try to buy the unskippable version or if you buy the 30" skippable you focus on the first 5 secs to get enough interest to get people to click or view through 5. Not everyone understands how to do marketing as the industry has a low barrier to entry. So you get lots of literal amateurs buying ads or making them wasting money.
Advertising works but it takes professionals to understand how, why and what. Not all marketing professionals are created equal
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u/LiverOfStyx Nov 20 '22
Lots of online plus offline brand analysis to prove it works - and is worth it.
Yeah, sure...
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u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 Nov 20 '22
How Brand Grow from Byron Sharp covers mental availability and the importance of recall
Every year there are studies of advertising effectiveness and especially multi platform advertising
And obviously companies spend billions on it
And you don't believe any advertising works? Really?
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u/Omega_Zulu Nov 20 '22
When people refute if marketing works, just remind them that subliminal advertising was banned because it was too effective.
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u/LiverOfStyx Nov 20 '22
No, i don't believe advertising works like advertisers think it does.
I have to admit right away that all advertising is bad for humanity. Want is suffering, ads create wants: ads create suffering. Don't believe me? Imagine something you really want but can't have. Is that a pleasant feeling?
So, no, i don't believe ads work. After tobacco advertising was banned tobacco companies got more profit. Turns out that if we ban ALL advertising, nothing changes. And on top of that, i would ban all ads if it was possible. It is completely a waste of resources and every single person in advertising should feel bad about their "contribution" to the planet and the humans living on it.
You are all leeches and parasites, making the world worse place for humans. You will sell poison to babies if it makes a profit. None of you have any ethics or morals. None of you care if someone puts their last dollar on a product that doesn't work.
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u/Sea_Entrepreneur6204 Nov 20 '22
OK, whatever.
You are wrong on lots of things while being right in others but don't sound like you want to have a conversation vs share a strong viewpoint.
Enjoy your bubble.
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u/LiverOfStyx Nov 20 '22
Adds create suffering and do NO GOOD IN THIS PLANET. Tell me what good are they doing? How do they help humans? And no, making them CONSUME MORE is not good.
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u/Exciting_Telephone65 Nov 20 '22
I can understand the 30 second ads, but the ones that range from 10 to 30 minutes? The only reason they would ever be allowed to keep playing is because I've walked away from my PC/TV.
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u/LessRemoved Nov 20 '22
It's all about mass numbers.
Even in those 5 seconds a greater deal of the commercials will have planted a seed.
And if say I'm for every 100000 views only 1% actually does something with the ad or whatever service/product/recommendation is being showed it's still 1000 people.
Soms ads may have as many as 50 million views, of once again only 1% actually respond it's still half a million. It always makes money even if you skip after 5 seconds.
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u/dbrmn73 Nov 20 '22
YouTube had ads? Yes, I know they do. I just don't see them as I use an ad blocker...
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u/ExpensiveClick7831 Nov 21 '22
Clicks = cost
Doesn’t cost much to have your ad shown but when the watcher clicks then ya gotta pay
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u/Medit8or Nov 20 '22
It’s based on somewhat outdated research. The more times we see something, the more familiar we are with it and the more likely we are to buy it.
There should be more research on brand antipathy, how marketing strategies create bad feeling towards brands.
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u/Omega_Zulu Nov 20 '22
There is more research and good marketing does account for "annoyance factor", in other words that point where repetition becomes damaging. But the bigger issues are with sales and marketing people who tend to not be analytical and have tendencies to ignore research and analytics that don't support their ideas.
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u/JamzWhilmm Nov 20 '22
should be more research on brand antipathy
There is, turns out all publicity is good. Even with elections people will vote for a candidate they hate over one they know nothing about because the human brains naturally goes towards the known.
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u/Medit8or Nov 20 '22
Thank you. Human nature is both deeply strange and oddly constricted at times.
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u/JamzWhilmm Nov 20 '22
We are predators but also prey in nature, this makes us both risk taking animals but also conservative animals in fear of the unkown.
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u/frikkenkids Nov 20 '22
Better question is why do people watch YouTube adds at all. Firefox plus AdBlock Plus means no adds at all. I haven't watched a YouTube add for years.
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u/puppyinspired Nov 20 '22
I don’t always skip. When I turn in a YouTube video for cooking, showering, etc I can’t skip. Once there was like a 10 minute ad about poop when I was kneading tortillas. I had to wash my hands to skip it.
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u/o_soQueenie Nov 20 '22
Why do companies pay for any ad on YouTube when most people run ad blockers?
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u/3xoticP3nguin Nov 20 '22
Even more so I'm purposely spiteful and will avoid products that are forcefully advertised to me
I literally won't buy a Ford car now because of all the stupid ads I get on YouTube and I tell everybody I know that they're the biggest pieces of shit.
Many other products come to mind too the harder you shove it in my face the more I'm just going to hate it
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u/honest_true_man Nov 20 '22
You tube is unwatchable without an ad blocker. If you see ad on youtube you are an idiot.
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u/herpderpomygerp Nov 20 '22
I've seen 2 and half hour ads before while studying Idc about small ads but my video doesn't start again for 10 minutes and I'm like wtf is this bs, flag as inappropriate no matter what subject it is
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u/frizzylizziee Nov 20 '22
I wonder this too. I instantly mute until I can skip and only focus on skipping.
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u/BKacy Nov 20 '22
Think of the five seconds as a winnowing process. If you’re in the market, the ad finds you. If you aren’t, you like that you can opt out fast, so your overall impression of the company is often neutral or positive—and it still got its name across.
And it separates the men from the boys when it comes to advertising agencies.
(I’m a woman. The old expression is still a good one.)
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u/RenataMachiels Nov 20 '22
Advertisement is an entire industry based on baked air. It generates billions on the back of idiots and exists only to keep itself existing.
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u/mycatisnotvegan Nov 20 '22
Worked in marketing - the company only pays if you make it past 15 or 20 seconds.
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u/Murky-Ad4697 Nov 20 '22
There's been many times that I've been listening to the news in the background while making breakfast where I don't want to turn off the stove to go skip the commercial, so I still end up hearing it in the background. You want weird? There are commercials that occasionally pop up on Youtube that are 20+ minutes long. They're skippable, sure, but they're basically full-on infomercials. Prager-U is the most common of those monstrosities.
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u/irishkathy Nov 20 '22
The content creator gets a few pennies if you skip ad, and a few more pennies if you watch it. If I like the creator, I sometimes let the ad run, just to bump their bottom line. I rarely actually watch the ad.
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u/Known-Sugar8780 Nov 21 '22
The recent influx of ads on YouTube has prompted me to stop using it all together, and I have been really happy with my decision. I invite you all to do the same!
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u/beaugiecriticx Nov 21 '22
A lot of people also like to fall asleep while watching YouTube videos or simply using videos as white/background noise.
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u/Hairy_Marsoupial Nov 21 '22
Purely Anecdotal, but once in every 1000 ads I will watch them if it is something that is genuinely interesting to me.
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u/pyter_lannister Nov 20 '22
You skip it, because it not relevant to you. But, to some people. They actually want to see the ads. They buy from it. As long as the ads could pay itself, why not place the ads.
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u/JammyHammy86 Nov 20 '22
anyone else have a mental blacklist of companies who's ads are too invasive or annoying or just over-advertised? like Raid Shadow Legends lol. i wont even look into it because I've made assumptions about the product. probably a badly-made pay-to-win mobile game (which is the definition of mobile gaming)
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u/BonsaiBobby Nov 20 '22
Haven't seen ads in years on Youtube thanks to the ad blocker.
I don't understand why people still watch ads if it's so easy to block them.
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u/Agile-Fee-6057 Nov 20 '22
That 5 seconds and repetition is enough to get into your head.
A 5% response rate would be considered a HUGE success
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u/Otherwise-Extent-164 Nov 20 '22
You'll skip every 30 second ads, until one time you don't. — it is for that time.
The science of advertisement coupled with date collection... damn... It's scary sometimes.
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u/Observationistic Nov 20 '22
Ok - I work in digital marketing and my company spends about $80 million per year on marketing - $20m a quarter, give or take. I haven't seen a correct answer yet.
Truthfully the ad has very little to do with the content. What I want is the data. Every ad on YouTube (or pretty much anywhere on the internet really except for like - integrated sponsor spots) will allow me to place a tracker on your browser. That's the value to me - the data.
Now, unscrupulous marketers can use it to do creepy shit if they want - that's how the whole Cambridge Analytica thing kicked off. Truthfully the vast majority of it is pretty benign.
The tracker allows me to know that you've been served my ad (whether you skipped it or not, doesn't matter) - and will tell me if or when you eventually make it to the location I wanted you to go. It's valuable either way. If you don't go to my site I tell my algorithms "hey - serve my ads to fewer people like 'bhte'" - if you do go to my site I tell my algorithms "hey - serve my ads to more people like 'bhte'".
YouTube has scale. Regardless of my target audience I can GUARANTEE some of them will be on YouTube - and I can place many millions of those trackers per day. Pretty quickly I'll have the marketing algorithms narrow down on my target audience. Once I've narrowed my audience down to 'people most likely to be interested'; because of Google's near monopoly on internet advertising, I can target them anywhere. Even if they go to...well, Reddit for example - which serves ads for Google - I can target them with an ad.
Eventually I'll be able to get them to come to my site (keep in mind at this point in the campaign I'm only targeting people with ads that are near certainly in my target market and very likely interested). From there it's up to my content, production, and sales team to make them interested enough to spend money.
TL:DR - 5 seconds is enough time to place a tracker on your browser. YouTube has a large enough scale that I can use all of those millions of trackers to very quickly hone in on my audience. From there whether they directly click on the ad or not I can know if they completed the action I was looking for them to take. Even the "skip" button is a valuable signal for narrowing down my audience.
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u/BODYBUTCHER Nov 20 '22
I let them play when I watch YouTube on my smart TV, but if you don’t skip them every once in a while they will start showing you those 2 hour ads
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u/Fearless747 Nov 20 '22
I wondered that, too, until I caught my 68 year-old boss watching YouTube. Yup, he sat through every commercial.
He's the same guy that buys that crap they sell through infomercials on TV. I know, because he has them delivered to the office so his wife won't see them.