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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

The interesting meta-point though is that an audience of 20 million viewers is a big hit [1] so a billion views is 20M people watching it 50 times or, 200M people watching it 5 times. And 2 billion views is double that.

Put in perspective that is probably in excess the number of times the most favored "I Love Lucy" show has been seen. Or put another way, you've got a music video with the same eyeball impact as the highest rated television show ever.

That says to me that either advertising on Youtube is a bargain or advertising on TV is way over priced :-)

[1] http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/02/10/the-walking-dead...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Lucy

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Or advertising on TV seriously under-represents the total number of impressions over time through alternate consumption streams. Right now, supposedly "unpopular" shows are cancelled, and then immediately get a successful Kickstarter from what turns out to be millions of fans who happened to be watching only through Netflix, or iTunes, or DVD box sets.

(Of course, none of these streams show the same ads the original broadcast does—but if you're a clever ad agency, you're already doing product-placement instead of interstitials most of the time anyway.)

> Right now, supposedly "unpopular" shows are cancelled, and then immediately get a successful Kickstarter from what turns out to be millions of fans who happened to be watching only through Netflix, or iTunes, or DVD box sets.

Can you name any examples of this?

The closest thing I can think of is Veronica Mars which was Kickstarted many years later and raised ~5 million dollars from 91,000 backers to make a single movie.

I think perhaps the "alternate consumption streams" viewers are not as lucrative as you think.

>The closest thing I can think of is Veronica Mars which was Kickstarted many years later and raised ~5 million dollars from 91,000 backers to make a single movie.

That everyone regretted backing.

[citation needed]

Or you can just watch the movie.

I read a few reviews of the movie when it came out. All were positive.

The movie may not be good (my personal opinion), but clearly it met expectations.

It was fan service. I think it pleased all the backers. As a standalone, it was not a great movie, but I don't think it was supposed to be.

I absolutely did not regret backing it. Although admittedly I'll watch pretty much anything Kristen Bell is in.

The Firefly series got enough support (in the form of written letters - this was pre-kickstarter) to be made into movie after a comically botched distribution through normal channels (The first seasons episodes were aired out of order in random time slots on Fox. It never had a weekly time that was consistent. This was the only season, natch.)

Family Guy also had a similar fate, but not because of a botched launch, but because its audience existed, but did not consume television through mainstream sources. It was canceled after 2.5 seasons and then went on to become the best selling animated DVD series. Fox brought it back the next year.

> (Of course, none of these streams show the same ads the original broadcast does—but if you're a clever ad agency, you're already doing product-placement instead of interstitials most of the time anyway.)

I think you just backdoored into the most interesting ad campaign ever: 1) Find a show with a directory / writer / production team known for producing content that "stands the test of time" (e.g. likely to have a high total_views_over_time:broadcast_views ratio) 2) Include product placement for a non-existent product by a currently-existing company with strong brand recognition 3) Test response to non-existent product by initial viewers 4) Start viral campaign around non-existent product (this likely favors "Hunh?" shows a la Lost or Fringe) 5) Trigger view bump in show (win award, produce new episodes in partnership with Netflix, produce new movie, etc.) 6) Launch real-product multiple years after initial product placement

I think you're missing a unit. You should be measuring eyeball-minutes. An episode of The Walking Dead might be 20M x 45min = 900 megaeyeball-minutes. Gangnam Style is 2B x 3min = 6000 megaeyeball-minutes. Disregarding target demographics for the moment, that says the advertising spend for a first run episode of Walking Dead should be about equal to 15% of the lifetime spend for Gangnam Style.

You're equating two things that have different lengths of attention which require different attention spans. They're also different in how the audience viewed that content. That gives the advertiser a different experience with the viewer.

For example, with I Love Lucy, the audience member likely sat and watched the entire commercial. With a YouTube video, the audience member can skip the ad or move on to other content.

TV = 22 minutes of content.

YouTube Video = 3 minutes of content.

Plus, the metrics that constitute views between the two media formats are completely different.

Advertising on YouTube is even more stupidly annoying than on TV. Fortunately, we have AdBlock :).

I watch lots of independent channels, and I purposefully turn AdBlock off for Youtube. :)

I'd probably do the same if I had similar watching habits :). Right now I mostly use YouTube for either a particular search result or just to play some music that's not on Spotify, and having to listen through a minute of advertising to watch a three minutes long video is a bit anger-inducing.

And god knows how many times the top music videos on YT are played at parties & other semi-public events! Heck, as the parent of young children, I've probably watched things like Gangnam Style >20 times just within my house.

Indeed! There's a cartoon rabbit for small kids here in the Netherlands called "Nijntje", and there are a few "official Nijntje songs" on YouTube. Our 1 year old daughter's favourite is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20J8DUJMgA4&app=desktop "Nijntje dansles" - it has 12 million views, and there are only 20 million people in the Netherlands, total!

This song has been played many times by a relatively small section of the Dutch population :)

That assumes YouTube eyeball count is of equal value to TV eyeball count though, right? Which doesn't seem like something we can assume- YouTube's targeting doesn't seem great, and there are plenty of other things to do on a computer while you wait through the ad.

YouTube targeting is a lot more accurate than TV targeting...

Maybe YouTube ads aren't the best, but the ads on the Internet can have much better targeting and performance tracking than TV ads.

>there are plenty of other things to do on a computer while you wait through the ad.

Yea, for example you can buy the advertised product with a few clicks. If you are quick enough then you can finish the buying even before the video ad finishes (sure it's not the most realistic scenario but it's possible). Or with a quick search you can learn more about the product to check how honest is the ad. TV ads cannot compete with this efficiency. The only thing TV ads can do better is reaching bigger and the less tech interested audience.

Advertising on YouTube is a bargain. Please don't tell anyone!

> That says to me that either advertising on Youtube is a bargain or advertising on TV is way over priced :-)

NEITHER. Advertising on YT is worthless and yes it used to be way overpriced on TV.

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