For obvious reasons, I’ve been watching a lot more YouTube than usual. Which means I see a lot of ads.
Ads are weird. On the one hand, I appreciate them. Without ad revenue, the entire economy of “free” on-line videos wouldn’t exist.
On the other hand, the entire concept is strange. People are trying to sell things, so advertisers put enormous amounts of time and effort into making slick videos to grab the attention of viewers.
But all those viewers really want to do is skip the ads. At the earliest possible moment, a typical viewer will click on the button that skips the remainder of the ad.
So it becomes an oddly adversarial ecosystem. People put enormous amounts of effort in to making ads to lure in viewers, yet those same viewers hate the ads, and consider them a nuisance.
Isn’t it amazing that this is the basis for one of the largest sectors of our economy?
The game has been going on for a long time. When remotes became standard rather than luxuries, users started muting the commercials. Advertisers responded by putting more text on the screen. When time-shifted VCR watching increased, and people routinely fast-forwarded through the ads, and advertisers kept their text messages on the screen longer. When the first DVRs added commercial-skipping features, broadcasters brought copyright lawsuits (because the sequence they broadcast other folks’ copyrighted materials in wasn’t just a reflection of contracts made but of somebody’s artistic expression, and they copyrightable).
A coworker with young children bragged that their kids are learning how to count: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, skip ads!
I was happy to read the last paragraph of your comment. Educational television! LOL