Yeah, you are 5 times more likely to click on an overlay add. Mainly because the close button won't be in the top right corner, it'll be tiny, and it'll only appear after a few seconds, (Or not at all as is the case most of the time with facebook).

Adverts are all well and good, but most people just want to ignore them, and while other sites are offering the same service with adds you can ignore, or no adds at all people will move to other providers.

...not to bother to use YouTubey then!

Don't people who make these statstics realize that most people are only clicking on those @#$%$# ads by accident trying to find out how to turn them off. Somehow I doubt those ads are generating five times more sales for their customers. What's most aggrevating is the ad usually covers up whatever was important about the movie clip.

I know I don't. I've been browsing the internet regularly since the mid 90's and I honestly cannot recall a single time I deliberately followed an add - banner, popup, layover or otherwise. (except in the occasional situation where I was searching for something specific and an appropriate add was returned).

I don't think I know anybody who does click on adds unrelated to their task at hand. But yet companies pay for them. Why? I have a feeling there are economics at work here I don't understand. Is they tied into Google's search rankings? Or are there millions of people out there clicking adds and buying products? Can anyone shed light on this? ...been scratching my noggin on this for quite some time.

LMAO - Do you know anyone anywhere who has purchased a product because of an invasive, "scroll-over", in-line or text hotlink advert they saw?

It is this "clicking the link" mentality that is responsible for countless viral software infections on computers across the globe. What is required is a complete move away from advertising - and perhaps, dare I suggest, a return to "content".

Here's an idea for anyone with half an hour to spare programming... write a program that detects when an ad appears in youtube and as quickly as possible, click the close button.

Should be fairly easy, so long as the close button is in a consistent place, or at lease a consistent image.

If You Tube ends up full of crappy advertising overlaid on the content then I will simply stop using it. I don't watch live TV because I can't stand the brain dead, childish rubbish that breaks up the program. My web managed PVR records anything I want to watch, then I watch it without the ads. Guess what, most Channel 4 programming is 42 minutes, not an hour. I don't want, won't ever wan't an (insert pointless product name) and don't need reminding of this fact by an irritating noise and childish, primay coloured video.

"We want our users to be able to accept and choose what type of advertising they engage in."

In that case, I'll go for the "none" option, thanks.

I remember a French study a year or so ago that showed that overlay ads were the adverts that pissed off most the user, and that were declared the most intrusive form of advertising.

The number of ads of this sort that I see that cannot be closed because the javascript close method does not work on my particular brand/version/patchlevel of browser, or that you click on a link only to find that the overlay window has focus (though transparent for the moment), and you run the add rather than execute the requested instruction....

A major PITA...

Cheers,

Daniel

... to not f*******g bother watching a video or even go to YouTube if adverts are all over the vid I want to watch. T***s

Let's face it - it takes a lot of storage space and bandwidth to run a video serving site, and while these sites may be "ad-free" for their introductory period to attract users, they will HAVE to make money.

And, frankly, no one makes money better at serving ads than Google right now. So they have the capabiliyt to do it to a level that makes them a lot of money, with whatever research tells them people will stand for. In effect, their ads are more "efficient", so they can be less intrusive IF THEY WANT TO BE.

The only other alternative is to make video serving sites pay-as-you-go with some form of micropayments...but that would probably stop a lot of users as well...

When I first read this, I thought "Oh no, not more ads"... But actually this may be a blessing in disguise. With some of the video content that ends up on the site and slips past the Policing efforts of the YouTube/Google staff, this type of advertising may actually serve to tighten the filtering of improper content. When an advertiser finds that their marketing will overlay mobile phone camera footage of violent beatings etc., These advertisers will probably want the regulation of such content to be a bit more strict, so they are not promoting violence along with vodafone.

- Chris M

I can believe that I'll be five to ten times more likely to click on the overlay ad compared to a banner ad.

After all, what is five times nothing?

Because I use Firefox with an adblocker and an image blocker and have been doing so for ages.

I also have another addon that turns off javascript. Very handy for those annoying sites that throw popup ads or overlay ads.

And if, somehow, someone still finds a way of shoving an ad in my face, the only thing he will gain is that I will blacklist that site from my viewing habits.

When I want to see an ad, I just look out the window, open a magazine or turn on the TV. I do not want them when I surf, period.

Can someone tell me why people love Google

(read comments on http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/21/microsoft_google_osi/comments/ as an example)

while also simultaneously despising what Google actually does (being an ad broker)?

DoubleClick hosts some of the most intrusive web ads around, and now they're owned by Google. Why are so many people staunchly defending Google knowing fully well that they are responsible for ads that it seems everyone wants to avoid?

...have been webcomic adverts managed by Project Wonderful. A relatively reputable advertising provider serving a niche market.

Outside of that, particularly when you're talking about advertising for chargeable services, I don't think I know anyone who'd click through a link and actually buy the product/service in question. I suspect that a lot of the money spent on such advertising is actually brand marketing, but that's just me.

No, I use scroogle and am not subjected to the google adds.

Consider the opportunitries for great screen-grabs:

Cialis ads overlaying (Ohhh...!) clips of Desperate Housewives...

Shatner's fat-ass Priceline ads running over old Star Trek reruns...

Laxative ads over Dubya's State of the Union address...

The possibilities are endless!

You're all techies and use Firefox so just download the freebie ad-blocker, it gets rid of all the shockwave junk for you.

There’s been a lot of discussion of how to value hot online video properties, like YouTube. There of course are many factors to this, but I propose a simple valuation model by using common web metrics to gauge user engagement. In other words, a simple way to value an online video property is in terms of not only how big its audience is but also how engaged they are (similar to a TV show). The more attention we have, the higher the prospects are for gaining advertisement revenue, and therefore the more valuable the property is.

Using this model we can also gauge what other online video sites might be worth by comparing user engagement relative to that of YouTube.

To read more, go here:

http://www.edwardjthomas.org/?p=10

Why is it if I flypost somebody elses property I can get arrested but when someone like google "flyposts" my browser it is perfectly legal? added more spamming ad techniques is not going to make jimmy who wants to watch the dancing monkey want to by an o2 Mobile, PS3 or viagra any more than he did when the ad wasn't there.

How about un adulterated pure content!! wouldn't that be great!

I am going to send a packet based bill to google based on 1pence per kb for every additional unwanted packet I have to download because of their crap advertising spam.

Your analogy is all wrong. It is illegal for someone to flypost your property, but it isn't illegal for them to place advertising on their own property.

Your browser is not being "flyposted" by Google and web page you're seeing isn't your "property"- Google doing the online equivalent of putting up biillboards on people's property and then paying them for it. Your browser is the equivalent of the car you're driving in when you see the billboard.

Yes, it's irritating but unfortunately there isn't much of a way around it.

"How about un adulterated pure content!! wouldn't that be great!"

Who's paying for it, then?

What Youtube are now experimenting with was inevitible. At what expense could it have kept running without any monetization model anyway? The users of Youtube will eventually realize this and have to accept the fact that the ads are there in their best interests which that is to keep receiving video content for free. It takes an immense amount of money to keep an engine such as Youtube running. Google itself was a classic exampe of this when it first came to market. The greatest product ever to land on the Internet which eventually needed some sort of advertising model to stay alive: Google Adwords and Adsense.

It is also interesting to note that there is another Internet company offering a similar solution, but more. Hyper MP Group have been working on a complete video presentation and advertising system that uses overlay ads from all exisiting advertising servers on the Internet. I think this is a better solution since it treats all videos and all advertising as the same. More impressive than other solutions out there. See for yourself. http://www.hypermpgroup.com/index-3.html.