Enforced Ads Coming to Flash Video Players

Dominare writes "The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. 'But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.' This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video."

Oh, come on!

That will kill self-made videos in no time. Who really wants to wait through a 3 minute ad for tampons to watch a 2 minute rambing of a camwhore? I certainly don't want to do that.

Not that I care, I have put exactly one video of on youtube. I just had a dash of inspiration. Probably will never happen again.

Re:Oh, come on!

It's not going to kill self-made video.

It's just going to kill any service provider stupid enough to try to use this technology.

Re:Oh, come on!

Funny, I put a video on youtube, simply so I could link to it from another site, but save myself the bandwidth.
-nB

Re:Oh, come on!

Now you've got yourself free bandwidth with a free complimentary advertisement!

Re:Oh, come on!

That will kill self-made videos in no time. Who really wants to wait through a 3 minute ad for tampons to watch a 2 minute rambing of a camwhore? I certainly don't want to do that.

You don't necessarily have to be mandated to watch the commercials, there is just an option to force it now. Copyright holders who are releasing self-made videos won't have to opt-in (depending on how any of the video sharing sites' (GooTube's) management decides to handle this I suppose) to allow the ads.

I think that this is a pointless move. Flash video exploded because it was fast and there weren't forcible ads and DRM.

Re:Oh, come on!

The Internet is cyclical: Someone comes up with a new idea, builds a site, popularity explodes, someone tries to control and monetize it (either the original owner or someone who bought it for way too much money), the attempts at control end up smothering the product, popularity declines, someone comes up with another new idea, and so on.

Re:Oh, come on!

I think that this is a pointless move. Flash video exploded because it was fast and there weren't forcible ads and DRM.

No, Flash video exploded because it was the only true cross-platform embeddable video format, and it offered quality at least equal to and in most cases better than the competition. So, rather than dealing with encoding QuickTime for Mac, Windows Media and Real for PC, and whatever else for Linux, you just do one format and you're done. And, it'll play right in the browser without you doing anything else.

There was never any promise of no DRM and no forced ads. In fact, another reason why content owners like it is that it's very difficult to capture a stream, unless you do it wrong (YouTube actually does it wrong - they don't obfuscate their url's, allowing plugins to easily save a file. But it's easy to hide url's if you want to).

Anyway, you guys are going nuts over nothing. This has nothing to do with user-generated stuff. It's pre-roll. It's going to actually result in *more* video being available on the net, because now content owners have a financial incentive. All those TV channels hesitant to put their stuff on YouTube? Well, you're gonna see a lot more deals done now. And meanwhile, the skateboarding videos and vlogs you're so used to will continue to look exactly the same.

Re:Oh, come on!

No but the TOU of sites like youtube may mandate that you accept an ad to be put in-line with your video.
-nB

Re:Oh, come on!

there's no reason (other than greed) for them to start including ads in truly user generated content.

Um, bandwidth isn't free, and they are hosting YOUR videos for free. If they want to put an ad on it, so be it. Go post your videos somewhere else. I am sure your homemade video of someone trying to light a fart on fire is really good, but YouTube will survive without it.

Why is it that anytime a company wants to break even or actually make a profit, it is called "greed"?

Re:Oh, come on!

Alternatively, sites like Youtube could amend their terms and conditions to allow themselves to automatically add adverts to all videos as they were being downloaded.
If they did this to every video they would quickly alienate their users. But if (say) 1 video in 100 had an advert added as you downloaded it, they could make a lot of money without losing too many users.

Re:Oh, come on!

That will kill self-made videos in no time.

Woohoo! Thanks Adobe!

Re:Oh, come on!

Who really wants to wait through a 3 minute ad for tampons to watch a 2 minute rambing of a camwhore?

To really rub salt into the wounds, once you've waited through that, you find the rambling of said camwhore is about how much she hates tampons.

Re:Oh, come on!

Personally, I don't even care. Unless it is really great content, I'm not going to waste my time watching any sort of ad before it. I'm tired of them trying to commoditize every god damn thing on the fucking internet.

One thing I hate is that on sites like gamespot, you have to watch an advertisement before you can watch a videogame trailer... which in itself is also an advertisement.

Hopefully this will start to kill internet video. There is nothing more I would enjoy more than seeing all these idiots who think the world wants to watch a 14 year old girl talk about how tough life is for two hours a day from her bedroom or some 70 year old moron singing and dancing suddenly go away.

Re:Oh, come on!

Not trying to flame you or anything, but: if somebody uploads a video of themselves talking about "how tough hard life is", or "some 70 year old moron singing" - and 'these idiots' enjoy it - then why should it be killed off? Not everything on the Internet exists to please you. Why shouldn't people be able to upload and enjoy these things? Nobody says you have to go and watch them. Just forget YouTube even exists, or add an entry to hosts redirecting it to localhost, if it really annoys you that much.

Re:Oh, come on!

That will kill self-made videos in no time.

I respectfully disagree, It's an optional feature. Nothing is being stated that it will be used by masses of people. However, I can see that you're trying to go for the 'obtrusive' part as being a big downside, which is true.

Who really wants to wait through a 3 minute ad for tampons...

First, even TV commercials only last 15-30 seconds. They just play 5-6 different commercials in a row. The online advertisers are often doing something different. Checkout ABC's website. You can watch Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate House Wives, and other shows, which include 2-3 30's commercials. I've watched these from time to time, and to tell you the truth, they're anything but bothering. The commercial MUST play through the full 30 seconds to access the next segment of the show. But the commercial stops and you must click a button to continue. So, like TV commercials, you can getup and take a break (of course, you can pause the video and do it anyways). From what I've already seen, these commercials are not that bad.

Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be bad commercials out there. The internet is a different media that attracts people differently and advertisement agencies will have to make sure they design their ads to be attractive and programmers will have to make sure they don't slam the user with too many.

...to watch a 2 minute rambing of a camwhore?

Good point, which is why they probably won't have ads on things that are not worth it. Also, it could probably also be designed like some popular sites that give you a full page 'ad' and make you click a link to go to the content, but do not show you another full page ad until 'x' minutes or you enter a different popular microsite. I would doubt video ads are going to be placed on most of YouTube videos. They'll probably stick to the unobtrusive text ads.

Cheers,
Fozzy

clever workaround

that still doesn't prevent me from closing my eyes!

Re:clever workaround

I bet in 15 years there will be mpaa goons in your living room and you're tied up with your eyelids propped open ala Clockwork Orange. This will be considered normal by everyone and the mpaa will be trying to make even more draconian laws.

and Americans will still be telling me about how the terrorists "hate their freedom" ;)

Breacher of Contract!

"It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming"
-Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcasting

Sidenote: what does "watch the button" mean here?

That's Not How I Remember It

I remember it as me graciously allowing them to use *MY* public airwaves to make a profit. And they ARE making a profit. I don't recall signing any other contract with them. I don't recall one ever even being implied. Not before this quote and not afterwards.

I wonder if he thinks I'm breaking some sort of contract in his head because I never so much as channel surf past his network, much less ever stop there.

Re:That's Not How I Remember It

Turner Broadcasting only runs cable stations. They include CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TCM, Court TV, and others. I'm sure if you have cable that you've watched at least CNN a fair amount. They are NOT operating on public airwaves, and if you watch any of these stations there is a contract that you signed that at least implies that you understand it is ad-supported and that is ok with you. That's not to say skipping commercials is stealing like Mr. Kellner says, but you are misinformed and wrong.

Re:clever workaround

What, Did someone type something? Mye eyes are close dto avoid the sashvertisement. God thinkg I cant touch type. Well, sort of

Enforcing advertisements could be good

Why would anyone buy advertisements that they knew could be easily bypassed? I don't think we'll end up with a scenario where you have a 2 minute clip that has 2 minutes of advertisement. More like you watch a music video, you see a 30 second ad beforehand.

Non-crap ads?

Enforced advertisements are shit. I recently rented the "Man of the Year" DVD only to be forced to watch a long narrative about how wonderful HD-DVD is going to be, followed by forced-previews. To add insult to injury, I only watched half the first night and had to sit through the f*cking ads a second time before I could watch the rest.

I don't hate ads though, just being forced to watch them (especially ads that suck). Hell, I have several hundred megs of downloaded advertisements... the ones that are actually quite funny/amusing. Every now and then I shared them with my friends.

I also had somebody recently show me a clip of some type of "ad awards." It's about 1h30 long, and it's *all* ads. I only had time to catch about 30 minutes of it, but I just about wet myself laughing at some of the better ones

The solution here is not to make ads the consumer can't skip... that just pisses the consumer of. The solution is to make ads that the consumer *WANTS* to watch... the type that has somebody yelling across the room "hey Bob, get back here quick, that new Bud Light commercial I was telling you about is coming on"

Re:Enforcing advertisements could be good

More like you watch a music video, you see a 30 second ad beforehand.

Hate to break it to you:
Music videos *are* ads.

One more reason to shun Adobe

I really hate companies that spend so much effort on trying to make me do stuff they know I don't want to do. These big media companies already have nearly every dollar that Bill Gates and Larry Ellison managed to miss; how come they need mine?

Re:One more reason to shun Adobe

I really hate companies that spend so much effort on trying to make me do stuff they know I don't want to do.

Well this is really a problem for advertising. Am I more likely to buy products if you harass me with annoying ads? No. Yeah, yeah, talk about psychology and how people get conditioned, but I've worked in ad agencies and even the experts acknowledge it: ads have become so annoying that people are building up an immunity to them.

That why ads keep getting more and more outlandish-- ad agencies know that they have to get your attention somehow. Unfortunately, even e-mail campaigns that people have opted in to fail because people don't want to invest the time sorting that stuff from general spam. People are using modified host files and ad blockers to block even targetted advertisements because there are too many intolerable ads on the web. It isn't clear that people would bother developing such strict ad blocking if they were only receiving ads that they might be interested in. Even where there are no technical methods in place blocking ads, people have simply gotten better at ignoring them.

And so many advertisers have sought ways to deliver targetted advertisements, but unfortunately any method for targetting is usually seen as an invasion of privacy. No one really wants their personal preferences made public so that advertisers can profile them better.

And I know that very often people come back and say, "well they wouldn't use [spam|flash bannars|whatever] if it weren't effective!" There's some truth to that, but not as much as you might think. Often, people in advertising (at various levels) have trouble gauging the real success of a given campaign, but they sell their services on the basis of the number of views they've acheived. They tell their customers (the people who want their product advertised) that X number of people will view this ad. Y number of people will receive the e-mail. In fact, the advertisers who actually place the ad often have little interest in the success of the product itself or in the satisfaction of consumers. It's enough to convince their customer that the ad is being seen.

Heh...

Meanwhile, the right edge of the text of this story is covered by the Flash ad (Sun anniversary pricing) next to it. So perhaps the Slashcode authors have prior art.

gnash to rescue

Suddenly I feel strong urge to support Free Software
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ [gnu.org]

Forced Ads...Forced Consumers?

What is the point? Are they going to force us to become consumers of the advertised products too?

What ever happened to the idea of targeting willing people? I'm not interested in whatever you want to sell me, so don't waste your time or mine forcing me to watch an advertisement. If anything, you'll make me less likely to purchase whatever it is you want me to buy.

If people were interested, they would watch the ads and make careful decisions. Yet, some people seem to think that we need to be strapped to chairs and have our eyes forced open to watch Big Brother ala 1984 tell us the "Good News" of whatever it is that Big Corp. wants to sell me.

Why do they keep trying?

allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts

Coming soon, to a codec pack near you:

FlashAlternative.

48 hours

I give it 48 hours after initial release before a patch to bypass the ads is released online.

Cannot force anything.

Fine, then I do not want to watch the content at all. I am willing to be lots of other people feel the same way. And considering the scale of amateur content production these days, I think there is plenty of room and sponsorship for alternative sites.

Damned Flash

I can't be the only one who despises the use of Flash on these video sites. Apart from the fact that my primary OS doesn't support Flash, I hate Flash players out of principle. There are such better, more universal video formats out there, I just can't understand why the hell these sites convert the videos to such a crap format.

Re:Damned Flash

I can't be the only one who despises the use of Flash on these video sites. Apart from the fact that my primary OS doesn't support Flash, I hate Flash players out of principle. There are such better, more universal video formats out there, I just can't understand why the hell these sites convert the videos to such a crap format.

Minor correction: Flash doesn't support your primary OS.

Carry on.

Re:Damned Flash

gxine opens a new window (which is the worst solution possible),

Why is that? I much prefer segregating most media types to their own program and window. I bloody hate it when I'm using a Windows machine and I click on a Word or PDF file, and the entire app is embedded *into* the web browser. What dumbass thought *that* was a clever idea?!?

Flash video players are a horrible user interface

The YouTube-ization of web content is an affront to user interface design, not to mention the underlying framework of the www. Ever go to a web page with six or seven auto-loading videos? Yikes. To make things worse, if you leave the page and come back the videos load all over again, because they are not cached. Talk about unnecessary use of bandwidth.

And the players themselves, ugh. Notice how they all look like the QuickTime or Windows Media players, but the controls don't really work? Try and fast forward or reverse reverse playback. Sometimes the play/pause barely work. The Flash video players have the familiar video controls, but they're quite often no better than fake plastic ones glued to the screen.

But the real question is...

...Will it work in Linux? Seriously, I'm really sick of Adobe's neglect of linux users. Let's hope this doesn't break the Linux Flash 9 plug-in for sites that use the ads.

Enforced not watching

That's the approach i took to network television.

10% ad load is not so bad (say 10 seconds for a 100 second video). That's what the ad load was like for television back in the 1950's and 1960's.

Advertisers have pushed it way past 33%. In some cases the ad load is almost 50%.

How can they even expect us to bother wading through 50% ads to get to content?

Re:Enforced not watching

How can they even expect us to bother wading through 50% ads to get to content?

Make ads the content. Problem solved. (MTV was founded on this business model.)

-Isaac

NEXT!

Ok, Flash is dead, what's the alternative?

Bonus question for 100 bucks: When you force user A, using product B, to do things he doesn't want to do while there are a billion alternatives for B, will user A keep using product B?

The death of youtube is greatly exaggerated

Just a few posts in and already people are spelling doom for youtube and the like. What's odd is that people think this somehow requires you to put an add on your home grown video blog if you use flash, which is ridiculous. This is basically an opt in system. If you want DRM and an ad on your video content, you can do so. Adobe is wooing the media companies with features they want. This isn't for anyone who doesn't want to use DRM, and you should be able to easily turn it off.

What this basically does is make it harder to copy your favorite clips from the daily show and late night with david letterman to Youtube very quickly. Now, you have to be a cracker who breaks the DRM and THEN posts it to Youtube.

Big deal

Ok, so even if it gets adopted on some of the bigger sites, people will just run away from them to some other, more free alternatives. Great job, ad-guys, you've just lost your big user-base. People who push stuff like this have, and i quote, "no fucking clue". First they should pull their heads out of their asses, then try to think of a way of either making old media more attractive to the general consumer, or harnessing the internet's potential in some other, non-invasive way. Although for me, they should just wither off and die.

(Sorry for angry tone, I'm just tired of things like this.)

Flash has *always* had enforced ad viewing

Adding DRM to off-line viewing of videos is new, but for the typical scenario of online viewing of Flash videos via a Flash player embedded in a HTML page, the ability to force ad viewing is nothing new. It's always been easy to roll a Flash video play that doesn't allow skipping or scrubbing through the video ad, but then enables that feature once the main video begins. Many sites that feature Flash video do exactly that.

There goes Flash down the drain.

As a web developer all i can say is this.