Youtube And Web Video by Darren Windsor Derby College Student

For nearly the entire time TV has been broadcast, advertisers have been showing their products and earning customers from this. However, since the vast rise in Internet sales, this has changed, massively.

With sites like YouTube attracting millions of viewers everyday, it seems that the Internet is being used much more than television, and advertisers are taking more than advantage to this.

To help me understand this better, I watched the commercial break between Coronation Street on the 31st of March 2009, and found that only five different adverts were shown and all, in some way, were related to the kind of audience that were watching the show (e.g. nappies, perfume etc.). However, by just logging onto one of the most visited sites, YouTube, I found video links, a mobile advertisement in a very large quadrant of the page, and numerous URL links to other websites, including Google, the new owner of YouTube.

This is a perfect example of advertising, as the viewer only has to click one button to reach another destination, where they find more links, and more. This process is called ‘Click Through’ and by each website being visited, the host is earning money.

Another form of advertising that actually reaches the recipient is through emails. When emails were first created they were text only; but now emails feature text, videos, images and links. When the recipient opens the email, they can get from one site to another through clicking a link through an image.

Video is becoming much more common on traditional websites, companies are realising that people will stop and watch a video but will only skim text leading many to exit the website.  We live in the TV era where we are all conditioned to watch more than we read.