In other news, campaignlive.co.uk still has full-screen pop-up ads. I think a good place for ads would be at the end of the video. I know many people will say

In other news, campaignlive.co.uk still has full-screen pop-up ads. I think a good place for ads would be at the end of the video. I know many people will say that then many ads would never be seen. But I think you should consider the emotion associated with your product when your ad is at the beginning: If I click on a funny 1-minute cat video, a front-loaded ad first of all makes Youtube act like it's broken. I clicked a link to play a certain video, and it didn't play. Instead something else played. For a brief moment, there is a feeling of brokenness. Then there is a feeling of frustration: you tried to accomplish something, and you were blocked (though temporarily). The second reason it is so irritating is that it seldom has something to do with you: it's advertising something you don't want. It's like someone who strikes up a conversation with you about something that they find interesting, but they didn't bother to consider whether it interests you. (Google's AdSense doesn't seem to work well in Youtube.) The third reason it is so irritating is a sense of proportion. An hour-long documentary could do with a 30-second commercial. A 30-second Youtube video seems overburdeded with even a 5-second ad. If you put your ad at the end, I am in a good mood, because I just finished my cat video. Also, I'm thinking of what to watch next. So an ad playing in the background doesn't bother me as much. Maybe it's even subliminal, since I'm not really concentrating on it. That's just what the advertisers want! ;) I think ads at the end would also be more in the same spirit as the text-only ads on Google Search, that it would be better to have an ad go unnoticed than have an ad that is interfering. Actually I think the genius is that text-only ads fit in better with text-only search results. The user is already in careful-reading mode. So in fact I think they are more likely to run across the text-only ad than some flashing image, which they would have quickly learned to ignore. I finally signed up for Youtube Red, despite my pennypinchingness. I think I'll stick with it. It includes also all the free music I want, on Google Play. Through that I found a new album by an obscure band that I always liked. It's only $10 a month, and if you can buy a family plan for $15.