Why advertise on YouTube?

Because adverting works, yes even on you.
- I hate this line of reasoning. I hate what advertising has become. Whatever advertising gimmicks might work on me, way more is wasted on gimmicks that at best I ignore, and at worst actively deter me from purchasing whatever they're selling. I'm a net negative as far as advertising is concerned.
  
  Chances are those ads aren't aimed at you.
  But even ads you hate leave an impression deep down in your brain.
  
  That may be true, but for every you (and me) that are deterred by some ads rather than inspired, there are more others. If it's didn't work, companies wouldn't spend the money.
  
  The thing is, it's quite easy for a marketing department to measure their success. They release an annoying unskippable YouTube and and change nothing else in their marketing and their profits go up by 1% or whatever. As much as I basically do no shopping where the day to day advertising I see can influence it, that's a pretty abnormal lifestyle pattern. Plus I'm still susceptible to choosing specific items inside a shop, and I definitely susceptible when I'm looking for specific products and come across secret ads disguised as advice.
  
  You know how there's often three sizes of something, say coffee, for example. Small, medium and large. Alternatively it could also be three price tiers; iPhone cheap, iPhone normal and iPhone expensive. Well more often than not the most expensive one is there so that people can go like: "$1499 for a phone?!? Absolutely not, I'll go with the more affordable $999" version" - just like Apple wanted you to.
  Customer behaviour is among the most studied psychological phenomenoms out there. No matter how stupid you think some ad is, it still works. It might not make a noticeable difference on individual level, but when you show an advertisement to million people, then it starts showing effect.
  
  I wish I could tell YouTube, I can't buy a car or sell a house, I'm not interested in football an I don't wear make up or womens' underwear.
  
  No, you’re not special. Advertising works on you.
- Not on me, I shoved an Uno-Reverse Card up my Nose and now the Ads think about me.
- Not really, it just has to work on a few people.
  With how cheap online ads are, if just 1% of people are stupid enough to act based on ads, it makes them worth it.
- Life Pro Tip: You're immune to advertizing if you can literally only afford rent and store-brand groceries.
  
  I'm not immune to advertising. I make a point to never purchase anything I've ever seen advertised. If you spend 30 seconds telling me about your product before I watch a 1 minute clip that I will probably regret watching anyway, then I will make a point to never buy anything from your company.

Hot take time.
Advertisements are not there for you to immediately buy something or even buy something in the next few days. Advertisements are there to associate a company with a product or service.
If you see an advert for washing powder the advertisers are not expecting you to head to the store and get some, just next time you think you should try a different brand of powder a memory circuit fires off in your brain saying "what about Fab or Omo?"
There was a show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation years ago called The Gruen Transfer where advertisers would discuss each other's ads and kinda pulls back the voodoo on advertising.
- Not much a hot take, more like the exact plan.
- People learning about your product or service is the big battle of commerce.
  At one end of the spectrum, you have a company like Sriracha, $0 spent on advertising. They had faith that word of mouth would suffice.
  At the other end of the spectrum, we have McDonald's. McDonald's was advertising on billboards in videogames, in the 2000s. Ask 1 billion people to name 5 burger joints.
  🤷‍♂️
- are not expecting you to head to the store and get some, just next time you think you should try a different brand of powder a memory circuit fires off in your brain saying “what about Fab or Omo?”
  That's still secondary, I think. Advertising is mostly about getting the stores to stock it so that you can buy it.
- There is also a similar CBC show (and podcast) on the same topic by a long-time advertising industry insider.
  Under the influence by Terry O'Reilly.
- @slazer2au they still do the show
- Yeah some jackass I'm at once in marketing tried to explain it to me. I haven't seen an ad in ages so I call bullshit. It's all mostly psychobabble nonsense.

Because a ton of people are still influenced by ads, and even if they didn't exist ads serve to keep the product/company in the public conscious. It keeps people talking about the product or informs people that the new movie/phone/whatever is coming out soon.

The more a company spends on advertising, the more they sell. You might be annoyed by the ads, but somewhere someone pulled out their credit card watching the exact same thing.
- So basically what you're saying is that most of us have to be annoyed because a small percentage of viewers are fucking tools?
  Yep, that tracks...
  
  Ads work way better than you think. Perhaps the most important thing they do is to make you aware the brand exists, and to keep it in mind when you're looking for a service/product. You're way more likely to buy something you've heard of, even if it's from ads.
  
  It's the same way with telemarketing and scams. If they didn't work, then they would go away. Obviously they are successful. That's why people keep using them.

I’ve seen a few video games and movies that I’ve gone on to look into from YouTube ads.
90% of them are total annoying bollocks though.

Occasionally I get an ad for something I want more information about. It’s rare, but it happens.

Simple: it's a really big video sharing website, so it's the logical place for us to put movie trailers on there.

And the problem is, when those of you who aren't susceptible to ads start blocking them, the service has to force a subscription model on everyone.
At one point most things on the internet were free because of advertising.
That's free as in "free". Our eyes were the cost.
Older folk will remember the insane pop ups, the animated gif banners, misleading links... But ultimately it let anyone, no matter what monetary status, enjoy the same content.
And now we pivot to a subscription based internet as traditional advertising falters. And then, the crazy thing that will happen is they will start advertising in the subscription services too.
We'll never escape, we can only keep running.
- Cable started the same way. No commercials. That's literally what the selling point was for the subscription.
- I use a content-blocker to block ad-networks that track me. It was never about blocking ads, but taking a necessary security measure against being tracked. They could still put ads in videos, like on TV, that aren't part of ad-networks and don't invade privacy - but they don't do that, they want to invade users' privacy instead.
- I also remeber the plague of malvertising with drive by viruses and Trojans. I haven't had a single positive virus on my systems in over a decade thanks to adblockers.
  It's insane, because the internet looked entirely different as well. Not these monolithic sites but scattered around.
- I'm not sure why I got downvoted for saying that. I'm not anti-ad blocking, just describing the economics of it all.
  But I have been thinking about the situation, specifically with YouTube.
  I think that the problem is that the adverts, as they are, interrupt the content, whereas they should be part of the platform instead.
  Like old Google search results, you could be offered sponsored content that you can choose to engage with.
  That would force companies to come up with things that people want to watch, and would effectively kickstart the creativity in advertising again, rather than the brute force interruption.
  Also, the branding of the platform and content. Shows "sponsored" by a company don't need to run a two minute advert within a video to gain association. A logo, brand awareness, links and a decent service should be enough for them to get value in backing creators...