Advantages and Disadvantages of Advertising on YouTube.

  In this blog, we are going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of advertising on YouTube. YouTube offers five different types of advertisement for business' to choose from: Video ads, reach ads (ex. homepage), display ads (on during entire video), brand channel (your own YouTube page) and mobile ads. They also allow you to customize using those five choices. According to YouTube, 400 million videos are watched every day. That's a huge market for advertisers to tap into. However, advertising with YouTube has many advantages and disadvantages that we are going to explore further.

   We will start with the advantages. Advertisers or everyday people can partner with YouTube and create a channel. They will pay a certain sum upfront for the partnership with YouTube but then are eligible to receive revenue from people clicking the ad/page and/or liking the ad/page. Also, after watching a video, YouTube suggest what other videos the viewer may like. As an advertiser you can benefit from this by selecting a target audience for the advertisement. The suggestions are based off preference so your ad can appear in multiple videos alongside of the initial video viewed. Advertisements can appear within the actual videos, before the videos, and in the background of the video, so there is a good chance the ad will be seen and more likely a chance that it will be clicked on. Finally, if you are a small company and do not have the money for the partnership, just make a creative and funny video and let it go viral. If done correctly, this will gather a lot more attention then just having a small ad on the side.

   Now for the disadvantages. Viewers are sometimes forced to watch a certain ad before they can watch the YouTube video. This appears to be an advantage to the advertiser but in fact it can work against them as well. If a viewer is consistently being forced to watch a certain ad every time they click a video, it will make them disgruntled and create a bad image for the advertiser. Also, some video channels allow you to skip the ad completely and other times they cannot which can irritate the viewer. We, as viewers, will skip the videos with advertisement if we can find a comparable video without. As with the videos prior to the ad, the ads on the side of the computer screen or below the video can also become distracting and annoying to the viewer. Since the videos and advertisements are based off preference there is no variety with the advertising on YouTube. No matter what video you are watching, the same ad will pop up over and over again.

Advantages:
- Videos with like and people more likely to receive money with every other click.
- At the end of every YouTube video there are suggestions as to what other videos you may like.
- Advertisements appear within actual videos and around the background so as an advertiser, there is a good chance your ad will be seen and more likely a chance that it will be clicked on.

Disadvantages:
- Sometimes you are forced to watch a certain ad before you can actually watch your YouTube video.
- The ads on the side of the computer screen can be distracting and annoying.
- Sometimes you are able to skip the ad completely, but every other time you cannot.
- There is no variety with advertising on YouTube. No matter what video you are watching, the same ad will pop up over and over again.
- If I as a consumer see that this video has an add with it, I will click out of it and just go watch another video without any ads. From an advertisers perspective, this is a disadvantage.