Video ads coming to YouTube this summer

By Cory Bergman 

We’ve heard that YouTube is experimenting with video ads — pre-rolls and post-rolls among them — but this is the first time we’ve seen a date. YouTube says it will begin rolling out video ads this summer. But the question has always been: will people put up with pre-rolls on user-submitted clips? Brightcove’s Jeremy Allaire suggests a new model that involves a 3-second pre-roll and a 10-second mid-roll ad. Sounds like a good approach for clips with natural interruption points — semi-professionally produced content — but jamming a 10-second ad into most user-video clips would be a big turn-off, if you ask me. So we’ll just have to wait and see how YouTube tackles it.

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