It's great to see that YouTube has implemented ads today in a very smart way. Perhaps inspired by VideoEgg, they've implemented an inline ad that appears beneath the video: clicking it plays the video ad in a layer on top of your current clip. They've also implemented the ad format I spoke about a couple of weeks back: displaying the thumbnail and title of an ad along with the related videos at the end of the clip, so users can decide whether to initiate the ad or not.
If this is Google's plan, it's much better than pre-roll and post-roll. The great thing is that ads are user-initiated, meaning that the control afforded by moving video online isn't lost - watch an ad whenever you want. The next step, as I mentioned previously, is to make the ads contextual: make sure the ad at the end of the clip is directly related to the preceding video, and clickthroughs and user satisfaction will increase. I'd even get rid of the overlay ad, since those get extremely annoying when you're forced to hit the "x" to remove them. When they reach a point where users want to view the ads (and lots of them wanted to view the popular Dove commercial), they've succeeded.
[shots via NTV]
