Yes, I think we all know what that’s referring to: the lame YouTube ads that precede the videos we want to see. Well, we all know we don’t want to see them (that’s why they give us the option to skip them ad after a few seconds!), so why does anyone think this is a good idea to begin with? I mean, the whole purpose of advertising is to try to interest prospective clients/consumers, so isn’t this going about it in the opposite way? I mean, if they are automatically assuming we will want to skip the ad, then aren’t they admitting it sucks and will repel us?
So here’s my plan to replace this really terrible advertising idea currently employed by YouTube: either: 1.) Make ads fun enough people will want to see them (Hey, PSY managed it with a song hardly anybody can understand, because it’s in Korean, so can’t ad people think something up like this?), or 2.) Rethink the ad strategy, like, for instance, do a branding thing, where people see a screen with a brand logo for a second or two, and then they automatically go on to the video they want to see (or else have the brand logo in a small corner of the video for a few seconds at the start and/or end). Wouldn’t both of these ideas work better than what they’re currently doing? Because the way they’re doing it now, it seems to me it makes the viewer hostile toward the product/company whose ad is there. And that’s not a good advertising strategy, in my opinion.
It seems to me that in order for advertising to be effective, it has to first be not so detestable that people immediately turn off to it before they even get the message. So then it should be catchy, or it should be like a billboard: you see it for a second, and then you move on, and maybe it affects you later. See what I mean? But it’s just an idea…
