I have a YouTube channel, which is separate from my private one. I use it to look up things I don’t want to taint the beautiful algorithmic balance I have going on the personal one. It’s one of the few ways I have made my life easier. It is also, however, how I know about YouTube adverts.
On my personal account, I pay R100 a month to have the ads vanish, forever and so I am constantly amused by the fact that advertising is still happening on the channel. Companies are still paying millions each month to push terrible adverts on people, who presumably fall within the lucrative, “wealthy enough to have data, but not wealthy enough to pay for the ad-free experience” market.
And it’s not just toothpaste companies or fabric softeners that are on sale. Somehow, some advertising executive has persuaded luxury vehicle manufacturers that their vehicles will definitely sell when pushed on LSMs 5 to 7.
Perfume manufacturers, whose products go for dozens of times the cost of a monthly ad-free experience on YouTube, seem to want every second slot. Are there really people out there spending R1500 a bottle of Puff de Plonk instead of 15 months getting rid of adverts for it?
Are corporate marketers so naive that they still fall for it, when advertising agencies say, “We need to shoot a YouTube commercial”? Of course, they are.
I know this because those same advertising agencies are also encouraging their brands to pay for the extended, unskippable commercials. Instead of hiring copywriters who are capable of capturing attention and engaging the viewer in the first unskippable five seconds, they are getting brands to pay extra and forcing a full minute of their bad writing down our throats instead.
Even YouTube knows its adverts are useless. They know their viewers absolutely loathe ads and are literally using them as a way to encourage people to sign up for the premium channel. Why would you want your brand attached to the experience people hate so much, that they are prepared to pay to make it go away?
