1. In your view and experience on YouTube, will typical YouTube viewers accept advertising while watching the videos?
As a YouTube user, advertising is a pain and I try to avoid it whenever possible, but it could be much worse and is generally non-intrusive as possible. Some videos provide a flash overlay at the bottom of the video that displays an advertisement similar to the Google ad words advertisements that appear when using Google for searching. This flash overlay can even be closed as soon as it appears. The advertisement does not hinder the viewer from being able to watch their video immediately. The text in the case study mentions how most viewers are dissatisfied with having to watch an advertisement before viewing the …show more content…

A positive example would be the Old Spice-guy video ad and follow-up campaign, which generated a positive response and high level of user interaction. A negative example would be ESPN’s attempt to advertise on the YouTube homepage for Monday Night Football. Within a few hours, the comments section of the video was filled with offensive material bashing American football in favor of the world game (Laudon & Traver, 2009, p. 700).

4. Google claims that users are 10 times more likely to click on its Flash animations at the bottom of the video screen than a standard banner ad. Do you believe this response rate is reasonable, and do you believe it could be sustained over the long term of, say, five years?

I believe this rate is reasonable because response rates to online advertisements are relatively low compared to other forms of media, but the user notices these ads more since they are focused in on watching the content they searched for. However, this increased rate will not be sustained over the long term. Viewers are getting savvier when it comes to these new types of advertisements, and will avoid them whenever possible, treating them like any other advertisement. I immediately “X” out of these ads when I am watching a video on YouTube, and I think they are clearly not effective since they take up part of the screen of the content