YouTube runs pre-roll video ads before the video you actually want to watch comes up. The company has been trying hard recently to increase its revenues, even though it’s the world’s largest online video website with one than one billion monthly users it’s yet to turn a profit. In a bid to make this happen YouTube is now going to allow you to purchase stuff from these pre-roll video advertisements.
It depends though if users actually want to purchase stuff from pre-roll video ads. I don’t know about you but I usually and rather impatiently count down the five seconds before the “Skip this ad” button appears just so I can get to the video I want to watch.
I imagine this is the same with most YouTube users, but it’s not like some of the one-billion plus monthly users won’t find anything interesting in the pre-roll video ads that they might actually buy.
This new ad format was announced by Google today at Ad:Tech SF. Since 50 percent of views on YouTube come from mobile devices the company has made sure that pre-roll video ads “work seamlessly” across smartphones, tablets and PCs.
Users on YouTube will see links to shop within the ad itself and they can click through if they find something worth purchasing. Google is going to bring this new ad format, named TrueView, to YouTube in the near future.