Sometimes they take the form of a small pop-up at the bottom of a video. Sometimes they are on the side where suggestions for other videos would be. Other times they are a full-scale, thirty-second commercial that you are forced to watch before the video can even begin. Either way, it’s no secret that Youtube is drenched in advertisements. These ads can range from one or two per video, to four or five on music video pages (not to mention the ads within the music video, or the fact that the music video itself is also an advertisement). But those ads are easily avoidable right? A simple click of the mouse and it’s gone. Well, until the next video that is. In which case you repeat the process, over and over again, until clicking that little x is almost instinctual. 

Some might argue that this procedure is simply a nuisance we have to go through in order to enjoy entertainment nowadays. And we’re obviously not clicking on every advertisement we see. Being the cheapskate I am, I know I wouldn’t buy those cute jeans from my favorite store if they were too expensive, much less an item being hawked to me on the internet by companies that have deduced my “interests” from my Google searches (just because I looked up “kayaks” that one time, it does not mean I am an avid kayaking fanatic). But is that actually what these companies are after? Are we really cheating them out of a profit by ignoring their ads every time? I think they are too smart for that. Obviously, all these big corporations have advertising departments filled with experts who know the best way to get people to consume. They know people will close those ads, but what’s more important to these advertisers is that we still managed to see the ads, even if it was only briefly. Our brains will take that information and store it away, only to bring it back up when we see the product again. The more times we see an advertisement, the more likely we are to remember a product. You may not even want to buy the product, but you could mention it to friends or family (even through an “Ugh, I never want to see another commercial for that new Honda Accord ever again!”) and they are valid consumers as well. 

I love watching videos on Youtube, and I know that, as a free website, it needs advertisements to sponsor it. But the amount of subliminal advertising that has taken over it lately concerns me, and at the rate Youtube is allowing ads, who knows how far it will go?