The last several years, headlines were made as big time networks, shows, professional sporting leagues, and movie studious fought to keep their content off of youtube and away from the masses. Viacom sued, NBC aggressively fought to keep the SNL sketch and internet phenomenons “Dick in A Box” and”Lazy Sunday” , and studious cried foul when trailers pre maturely circulated on the massively popular video depository.
While its a shame this content is not available on demand via youtube, its 100% understandable that these companies wanted to protect their business interests by choosing how, when, and where people view their programming. Studious pay and receive large sums of money to air never seen before trailers before a big time movie, professional leagues want you to watch highlights on their web properties, and television networks need you to tune in or visit their website to capture ad revenue to help pay for production costs.
But today I was absolutely baffled at how many of my “Commercial of the Week” blogs no longer had valid youtube urls to show the actual commercial (Sharp, EA, and others removed). I can only assume that in the majority of these scenarios, the ad agency or advertiser requested to take off the commercial from youtube. But why?
Advertisers throw billions of dollars annually to spread their company or products gospel to the masses. With so many people avoiding advertisements via tivo and shifting away from print media to online, you would think advertisers would embrace the idea of allowing curious potential consumers to view advertisements online.
Some do, as companies will upload their commercials onto the site themselves or just turn a blind eye to the repurposing of their content. In fact Youtube has embraced working with companies to display their content allowing them the opportunity to build a customized channel which users can subscribe to and find videos faster. (CBS channel screenshot below)
These companies understand that any ad impression is a good one regardless of the fact that youtube’s platform allows for negative comments and attacking response videos. While some fear that allowing an open forum for thousands to criticize your commercials warrants restricting ads from youtube, advertisers should take note at just how many consumers are surfing Youtube in search of funny or interesting commercials. Below is a recap of the top 3 commercials of the week on Benkoo.com based on their listed web traffic. Keep in mind this does not include replicas of the same ad on youtube but just the exact video found on my site.
3- Ipod Nano – 435,000
2- Peyton Manning Pep Talk 625,000 views
1- Toyota Tacoma 2.175 million views
