In a fantastic example of outreach, the Australian Federal Police turned the YouTube pre-roll ad on its head and used the slot to ask location specific viewers to confirm whether they knew the whereabouts of cold case missing persons. To date, the ads have been served 1.2 Million times and the police now have around 238 new leads. Read about this and other stories from the week in online video.
Australian Police Use YouTube Pre-Roll Ads To Find Missing Persons
As YouTube users, we have become accustomed to the pre-roll ad and will almost involuntarily hover over the ‘You can skip to video in 5’ ready to do so. Ad agency VML, in conjunction with the Australian Federal Police took advantage of our ever decreasing attention span to produce some brilliant interactive long term missing persons posters. Using geotargeting, the ads were served to users in specific target areas and instead of being presented with the ‘Skip ad’ button, those users were asked click either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on whether they had seen them. The ads attracted 1.2 million views in 5 days.
Read More at: BusinessInsider
Facebook’s Video Ads Pushed Back…Yet Again
We wrote about Facebook video ads back in April but it looks like the launch has been pushed back yet again, according to Ad Age who cite concerns regarding user experience. It looks almost certain that the new feature won’t be ready in time for Black Friday and the official start of the Christmas holiday spending season which means advertisers can push their reported $1 Million per day budget elsewhere for the time being.
Read More at: WebProNews
YouTube Wants You To Inspire Other YouTubers
From now until the 23rd of September, YouTube creators have the chance to show off their expertise to others via the YouTube Creator Academy. If you think you have something to offer the YouTube community then create a short video about around the topic of engagement or effective Calls to Action, upload it to the Creators G+ page and let your peers vote on your contribution.
Read More at: YouTubeCreator
Lil Bub Documentary Finally Arrives On YouTube
Internet darling (although she’s no Grumpy Cat) Lil Bub and her friends finally came to YouTube this week with the VICE produced documentary that’s been hyped to death for the past 6 months. It’s actually quite brilliant and takes us on a journey through the cult of the internet cat and why we go so nuts over them. It’s only available for 30 days so stop EVERYTHING you are doing and go and watch the snout faced cutie. Oh and please bring the meme pop up shop to my town immediately, thank you.
Pakistan May Unblock YouTube After Testing Content Filters
Access to YouTube has been blocked for citizens of that country since September 2012 but there appears to be some movement to restore the service, albeit with restrictions on content the Pakistani government still deems offensive or inflammatory. Missing ‘filters’ have been acquired from the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited which effectively allow the government to block over 4,000 URLs that they say carry blasphemous content.
