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> I think he was one of the first to realize that you could take regular YouTube videos that are several minutes long and turn them into skippable pre-roll ads,
by defen 1y ago
> I think he was one of the first to realize that you could take regular YouTube videos that are several minutes long and turn them into skippable pre-roll ads, and some people would watch the whole thing.
I'm struggling to understand what this means. He put lots of ads on his videos? Or something else.
- j_bum 1y agoHe would pay to have his videos as ads on other people’s videos. E.g., I’d go to watch a video of SmarterEveryDay, and Tai Lopez would show up as an ad, telling me all about his Lamborghinis and bookshelves of books he’d never read. And people would just watch the full ad, even after they could’ve skipped (5s). That was an interesting era of YouTube, for sure.
- mk89 1y agoIs that against TOS? Was it scam?
- showmexyz 1y agoHe defrauded investers out of $120M.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI couldn't find any record of a conviction with a cursory google
- showmexyz 1y agohttps://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26413 https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releas... They are not convicted yet.
- modeless 1y agoIt's not against YouTube's ToS to run pre-roll ads of any length, of course. But I think he was just selling get-rich-quick schemes or something. At the time YouTube ads were more rare and generally short, like 15 second TV commercials, so it was weird to see long-form content as ads. He absolutely saturated the site with this ad for a while to the point that it became a meme. I'm guessing a significant percentage of YouTube's user base at the time was served that ad at least once.
- SpicyUme 1y agoYeah I still occasionally get really long ads that must be just to see who watches all (most?) of them.
- josephjrobison 1y agoThis is an example of the fact that while only 1% would watch the whole thing, they just raised their hands as the marks, to be worked on through the whole funnel.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoA view counts as a view before the full video though, so running it as an ad still makes it look like you have an audience.
- vintermann 1y agoWhen people leave autoplay on, they might not even realize they watched an ad, I guess?
- mrguyorama 1y agoThere are armies of bad parents or babysitters that just hand baby an Ipad, not on child or restricted mode, and just let youtube literally Clockwork Orange a human being. It's horrifying.