This is a test -- ads on YouTube's mobile site

Monday, August 18, 2008 | 9:00 AM

Over the past year, we’ve focused on creating and delivering a full-featured YouTube mobile user experience. We think we've made great strides in doing this, allowing you to access YouTube wherever you are, whenever you want it. YouTube for mobile continues to grow exponentially, and today, people watch hundreds of millions of YouTube videos every month on mobile devices.

You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan. This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube -- it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.

At YouTube, we are constantly testing new ways to deliver the kinds of ads that contribute to the user experience while making the most sense for advertisers, and we've learned a lot about what works for YouTube and what doesn't. We're excited to explore new approaches to mobile advertising, and will evaluate this test closely over the next several weeks to make sure we provide our community, our partners and advertisers with the most valuable and effective mobile experience possible.

10 comments:

Tim Gray said...

Are you kidding me? I mean, I understand by providing a service that costs money to provide to the end user for free, the difference has to be made up somewhere. And for better or worse, that difference is often made up in advertising. But to claim that advertising is going to make the user experience better? Come on...

josephayoung said...

It does sound a bit like an advertisement in itself, as http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/18/this-is-a-test-of-the-youtube-monetizing-systemthis-is-only-a-test/ describes it.

But just as ads have appeared in google search and gmail, they have enhanced the user experience by giving us what we want, even when we don't always know what that is.

Cito said...

If you could update us about your findings concerning the mobile user experience would be great.

www.liftlab.com/think/floris

b said...

While advertising could very well be useful to the end users, you have to keep in mind that most mobile browsing is done under either transfer caps or pay as you download, which rapidly reaches a high cost. So ANY kind of advertising for mobile devices MUST take this into account, and keep the size the lowest possible.
For the record, I'm not opposed to this, as long as it is non obtrusive and light on resources, particularly considering the limited nature of these on mobile platforms.

Unknown said...

As viewing youtube videos on a phone would use a lot of credit, most people would be on contract when they view the videos, but no-one is going to click the adverts because they would use some of their browsing cap, and just them being there does as well - its not so bad if there just text though.

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