Online video websites are trying to come up with effective ways of placing advertisements on their pages. Oftentimes, the viewer simply wants to watch their television show or video clip without interruption. In fact, it doesn’t seem much of a stretch to say that the idea of having to watch an advertisement either before or during the video they’ve selected is enough to infuriate the viewer. One new approach to this problem is ad swapping. Websites like Hulu and Youtube have started testing out a new system that allows the viewer to decide for themselves which ads they will get to see. Hulu is utilizing its “Ad Swap” feature, which enabled the viewer to choose from a list of substitute ads if they do not want to view the pre-selected one, while Youtube has put forth a system in which the viewer gets to select between three different ads. Despite these new attempts at injecting ads into online video, the results still show that the “Skip this Ad” feature is the most popular choice.
In fact, there has been little positive response to the ad swapping idea. The general problem with it is that by the time the viewer has decided which ad they wish to see, they could have already been halfway through an ad that was selected for them and started automatically. This ad swap concept provides the viewer with a choice, but it still slows them down in achieving their ultimate goal, which is: to watch the video that they selected. I think that the best choice for everyone involved is to give the viewer the option of watching the ad or not. This way the viewers who are actually interested in the product will watch, while those who aren’t won’t become upset and start associating the product with negative emotions.
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