If youtube knows that I am going to skip the ads anyway, why does it still show the ads every 5 minutes but also has a skip button? Either they should have compulsory ads or not have it at all.
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Whether ads are skippable or not is up to the advertiser who pays for them. For a skippable ad, the advertiser doesn’t get charged if the ad is indeed skipped (within a certain number of seconds). So the idea is: I don’t want to pay to show an ad to someone who isn’t interested in what I’m advertising. I just want to pay to reach those few people who see the first bit of the ad and are engaged by it. And it’s a win-win, because viewers also don’t want to see ads that they aren’t interested in. This is a good fit for ads that promote specific products or target niche markets. Also, if you only see the first five seconds, that still means you got a little exposure to it, and the advertiser gets this for free.
(If you can’t imagine ever not skipping an ad: it does happen. I’ve even, on rare occasions, done it myself. Sometimes you see something you’re actually really interested in, even if it’s only once in a thousand ads. And advertisers are fine with that. They know their ad will (usually) only ever appeal to a small fraction of the population anyway, and so they’re always looking for ways to pay only for ads that actually reach those people. Which is increasingly possible on the internet, given the data that is available about users in order to personalize their ads.)
However, sometimes the main point of the ad is just to build brand recognition and familiarity. M&M’s knows that you’re not interested in watching their lame ad. You’re not going to click through on it to find out more about M&M’s. The whole goal is that, next time you’re tempted to buy a snack, M&M’s is high on your list of options that come to mind, just through sheer familiarity. So for that type of scenario, unskippable ads are a better option. These are the same ads that, in old media, would feature on main street billboards or on primetime TV. The skippable ones are more those you would find in trade magazines or relevant stores, or around relevant niche TV programming (e.g. commercials for fishing equipment scheduled around a fishing show – not around American Idol).
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