The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is beta testing a button that will let you stop a YouTube video ad from playing a few seconds after it begins. The site will eventually let you choose which ads you want to view when you’re about to watch a longer video, too, similar to Hulu’s current “tailored ad” experience.
The site’s Senior Project Manager Baljeet Singh detailed the plan at a company event earlier today.
Hulu, YouTube’s closest competitor, already lets you pick from different ads and ad formats, but YouTube hasn’t been known for the sophisticated, longer-form programming that Hulu runs, so these sorts of features haven’t been as critical in the site’s priorities.
Even though Hulu and YouTube both stream professionally produced video content — some of it copied from TV broadcasts — viewers still see web video viewing as a different experience from television. They expect fewer and shorter ads. Innovative ad agencies and platforms have responded to this by trying to drive up engagement instead of ad volume, giving users choices and making ads interactive with Flash and HTML5 tools.
Because it has strong data correlating ad quality and skip rate, Google believes that giving users the option to skip ads will encourage ad companies to make higher quality ads more suited for web audiences, which will ultimate improve effectiveness.
Will YouTube Move Beyond Ads?
Of course, Hulu just announced a new program called Hulu Plus that will offer premium content for a monthly subscription fee while still streaming ads to its viewers. YouTube has publicly explored pay-per-view options, but not a subscription model.
Singh was quoted by PaidContent admitting that YouTube is “experimenting” with more models. However, he says that the site’s “full force is behind advertising” for now.
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