I use YouTube to listen to music.
I love YouTube: I love its user-driven content, its Comment and share facility, the way it allows massive splurges of innovation and creativity and sends messages. What I hate however are the adverts, whoever is with me, high-five the screen. Don’t break it though.
The advertising on YouTube is as annoying as any other online power-hose advertising marketing technique that tries to get as many of the right target audience as humanly possible with no real regard to where that advertising actually goes and who it actually reaches. Its annoyance boils down to one simple factor: Its irrelevance.
Fall Out Boy means I buy Raspberries?
Take this advert for example; I search for a track that I know is in the Charts right now as well as my YouTube playlist, from Fall Out Boy. As usual, an advert plays before the video giving me the option to skip to the music after 5 seconds:
A cracking advert in terms of its graphics and lovely, calming voice over and terms and conditions so thoughtfully placed underneath in tiny text.
However, this advert hasn’t taken into consideration:
- That I am in my early 20’s (ish) that I am an avid Rock fan
- Pendulum, In Silico is one of my favourite albums – ever.
- I constantly talk about my music tastes via every Social Network I can think of
- My YouTube playlists contain Queen, The Beatles, Iggy Pop and Katy Perry
- It’s around 9:30am on a Monday morning and that I will have just had my breakfast.
- The IP address is coming from my work computer
Instead, it has given me an advert for the online supermarket Ocado.com.
This bares no relevance to me at this particular time, or at any particular time, as I have never once shopped online for my groceries. As I am logged into Google pretty much all the time, YouTube should know that this has never been a part of my online search criteria. Also, I am not hungry, I am not in need of groceries as it is Monday morning and logic would dictate that I went shopping over the weekend.
2013 is the Year of Content; but in order for that Content to be considered great, it has to be relevant to the person who sees it – otherwise there is no point in 
producing such expensive adverts.
Someone finally gets it Right
As more and more information is shared online, targeting ads have the potential to actually make an impact on the Customer instead of annoying them. This is where BBC Radio 6 Music has impressed me:
I searched for a firm favourite, Queens of the Stone Age (an artist who is also listed in my YouTube playlists) and was greeted by this advert, instead of the automatic tune-out an advert would normally receive from me; it grabbed my attention straight away. Here is what he said:
“Next on 6 Music, this is Queens of the Stone Age, *takes off headphones and talks directly to the camera, aka, 
me* A great choice and for you *nods at me* who is about to rock, we salute you! If you want to hear more amazing artists, tune into BBC Radio 6 Music, Where Extraordinary Music plays.”
Brilliant! It was short, not at all condescending, didn’t try and sell me anything in an obvious way and spoke to me – me! I got the nod of approval from an Influencer within the music industry, he saluted me for my taste in music, spoke to me about an artist I cared about. As a result, I didn’t skip the advert and Radio 6 stuck in my mind afterwards.
Targeted marketing doesn’t have to be rocket science. While this advert didn’t take into account much of what I listed before, it did listen to one key factor – that I like good music and because of that it directed something personalised to someone who quite simply likes Queen of the Stone Age.
