True View Skippable Ads on YouTube

Presented at Media 360, Manchester June 9th (this URL brings you back here!)

A couple of stats before I start - we announced last week that YouTube is now receiving 48 hours of uploads every minute and is streaming 3 billion

views a day.

We know how the world has changed - its been observed that we all have 'hurry sickness' - we're too busy.  What are the signs?  Always pressing door

close in the lift, secretly enjoying it when you *just* catch a train or plane.  Doing something else while brushing your teeth.

We've long left behind a world where if you weren't good enough for a talent show, they politely told you mid-week that you wouldn't be coming

back.

Now we're so busy that sitting through the act to the end seems too much to ask - Britain's Got Talent buzzes some acts off halfway

through. Tough luck, baby - that's the world in 2011.

There's evidence of this everywhere.  You might not know this - but only half of web video ads ever finish.  People are either bombarded with too

many ads and they press 'back' or they just leave the page. 

Imagine if we tried to solve this - and made something that worked for the realities of 2011?  We came up with our attempt at answer at YouTube -

True View ads - ads that viewers can skip.

So I handed out some airhorns at the conference and asked people to play along - which ads would they

watch, which would they skip. Play along at home, kids.

Skip it or view it?

I bet you don't even press play.

While I'm hoping that people skip this ad, what on earth is it about?  What is the relationship between these two chaps? At the end are those fountains...

um... figurative? :-P (Did they add the girl when they realised what they'd made?)

I'm hoping (pretty much praying) that people watched the couple of good ads - and skipped the others.  Because that's what we are seeing - people are

skipping about half of the ads.  You'll remember that's pretty much what the industry average was anyway....

We sell these ads on an auction.  Each time the ad is viewed we give it a better 'quality score', if it's skipped the score goes down.  Very quickly we learn

which are the best ads - as voted for by viewers.

Some ads are skipped 70% of the time, some much less.  I said its an auction but we multiply the bid in pence per view by the quality score.  Better ads pay

less.  The advertiser only pays if the ad is watched to 30".

We did some research - using biometric suits.  These are like posh tank tops.  Filled with wires and sensors.  They check pulse rate, movement, breathing.  They measure engagement.  Watch the difference between an ad that the

user can skip and a standard ad.

We found that when the user is in control they are 75% more engaged.  They are deciding whether it is right for them and are more alert.

Here's another example - you can see that the very same ad is more engaged when the user has a choice to watch or not.  Those who weren't

interested just moved on.

While the unwatched ads are free, they do have a benefit.  Almost 2/3 of people remember what the advertiser was, even if they didn't bother to watch

it.  The biggest reason to skip was 'I've seen this before'.

So I only had 10 minutes.  Hopefully I've shown you the risk we took by trying to create ads that worked well for viewers as well as advertisers.  We've had

scores of early adopter advertisers who are delighted with the results - they're also seeing an unexpectedly strong direct response impact (people clicking

and buying their products because of the lean forward effect).

We're confident that over time advertisers will decide that rather than just 'spraying' an audience with advertising, aiming to hit a mass audience 4 times

each, they will think about trying to get one effective view of their ad for the right viewers.  As a result we're already seeing smart advertisers buying more

and bidding more to win the auction.

Currently this is an incredible opportunity for those who move quickly - its working out cheaper than TV - and advertisers are only paying for the people

who were interested in their ad.

More details of the research follow - I've also added some links for another presentation.

You can contact me at brucedaisley @YouTube.com, I'm good at email.

Thanks!

Thanks for coming to this linkYou may also like the

presentation from IAB EngageSlides for IAB Engage are also

here