YouTube is one of the most popular video streaming services online. It allows users to upload videos on their channel, which are then available for everyone to watch. Users can subscribe to channels they are interested in and get notified every time they upload a new video. YouTube has many different features for people who want to use it on mobile devices. They have apps so people can watch videos on their phones or tablet. With so many great features and a huge variety of content to watch, youtube is surely the favourite platform for video streaming.
But as we all know it, no great thing can come for free. Because those who upload videos on youtube and the employees who manage youtube, all of them spend a lot of time and resources in doing that. Therefore it becomes necessary to provide them with necessary incentives in the form of money. And youtube generates this money by the way of advertisements on the videos. Recently youtube has also started to show two ads together! But why is that?
What is a Double Ad?
YouTube Double ads are the latest YouTube Ads format. They allow advertisers to run two ads back-to-back in a single go, with one video ad playing for 30 seconds and the other playing for 10 seconds.
These advertisements can either be skipped or remain unskippable. There is no explicit regulation that states that advertisements must be skippable or otherwise. In accordance with your viewing and searching history, the youtube algorithm determines whether to offer skippable or unskippable advertisements.
YouTube first introduced YouTube Double ads at its annual Brandcast event in New York on March 8th, 2019. The new format is available globally on all YouTube channels that have ad breaks enabled, and advertisers started to run them from April 2nd, 2019.
What are the reasons for Double Ads?
Here are the 5 reasons why youtube launched double ads on its platform:
1. More and more advertisers are coming to youtube
Youtube is becoming increasingly popular, and as a result, more and more people from all over the world are wishing to advertise their products or services on the platform. As a result, as YouTube continues to receive an increasing quantity of commercials, and to accommodate all of them, the amount of adverts that viewers see per video has to be increased. Introducing double ads is one way in which youtube tries to show more ads.
2. Better Viewing Experience for Viewers
Double ads was a clever strategy employed by youtube in order to hit two birds with one shot. On one hand, youtube needs to show more and more ads to increase its revenue, but on the other hand, showing more ads also mean more frustration among the viewers as it is a fact that viewers find ads annoying.
Youtube found a solution to this problem in the strategy of double ads. since youtube now shows two ads together, it means that the viewers will be interrupted only once and not twice while watching the video. By introducing double ads, youtube attempts to achieve both of these objectives that is to show more ads without annoying viewers too much.
3. Marketing strategy
YouTube Double ads are expected to give advertisers more options to reach their target audience effectively with smaller budgets. Double ads are often used by brands in accordance with several marketing strategies to make a stronger appeal to their potential customers.
Brands can now engage their target audience more effectively by creating double ads explicitly tailored to their needs. They use strategies to carefully plan what to show in the first ad and what to show in the second ad so that together these ads can act to make a really bold impression of their brand on the customer.
The other way brands like to use double ads to their advantage is by showing the same ad-video in both the ads. Showing the same thing twice is a strategy to play on the memory of the customer. Listening and seeing the same thing, again and again, causes our mind to learn and retain it and this is the core of their strategy.
4. Higher earnings for content creators
The more the number of ads shown on the videos of a YouTuber, the more money he will be able to make in the form of ad revenue. By allowing to play double ads on their videos, channel owners get an easy way to increase their earnings from the same video. To them, it means more money for the same amount of effort.
5. Push towards youtube premium
As we all know that youtube has launched its premium service under which you can get an ad-free viewing experience by paying some money in the form of premium fees. Of course, premium offers many features, but ad-free viewing is the major feature it has. And Youtube knows that people will buy premium only when they will find ads disturbing. Know while youtube don’t want to annoy viewers too much, it prefers to maintain an optimum level of disturbance for the customers so that more of them get motivated to buy youtube premium.