Friday, March 23, 2012
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Through technological advances there has been a widespread change in the way in which consumers access video content and this change has lead to producers trying to find new ways to advertise their products to these consumers. This website will attempt to shed some light onto the cost of surfing the website YouTube, whether it is through the constant advertisements around the area where you watch the video or the fifteen to thirty second advertisements between videos. In order to determine what people think of this form of advertising, I will be looking at the comments they made on the videos. This research topic aims to show consumers what is the cost of watching videos on YouTube. I decided that I should investigate this topic because I enjoy watching videos on YouTube and I wanted to look into what it was costing me on a daily basis. On this website, I will be examining how the change from conventional advertising to more advanced forms of advertising is changing the costs of watching videos for consumers. My research question is two-fold: (1) do consumers on YouTube mind the cost of watching videos (i.e. advertisements) and (2) does it cost more to be a consumer watching videos on the Internet or on television? For this research question, I believe that YouTube is the perfect website for this research because it has changed the ways in which advertisers reach consumers. Also, YouTube has become one of the largest websites on the Internet and it communicates its videos to consumers in large quantities on a daily basis. After this homepage, you will travel to the annotated bibliography where you will see the articles that I reviewed that dealt with consumerism and YouTube. Next, you will go to the data, methods, and ethics section where you will see a combination of archival and auto ethnography research. Then you will see my analysis of this data. Finally, you will see my concluding remarks and a reflection of my research.
Annotated Bibliography
1) Is “YouTube” telling or selling you something? Tobacco content on the YouTube video‐sharing website, Becky Freeman and Simon Chapman, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598506/
This article talked about how it is difficult for tobacco companies to advertise on old-fashioned forms of media, such as the television. It goes into talking about how the tobacco companies decided to use websites such as YouTube to promote tobacco products. The researchers decided to search smoking on YouTube and it came back with the following results, “Of the first 50 videos retrieved and assessed by relevance, 24 contained cigarette smoking imagery, 2 cigar smoking imagery and 21 marijuana smoking imagery.” Through this statement it can be seen that YouTube is becoming a website that can promote tobacco usage. In the article’s concluding remarks, it says that major way of marketing tobacco is becoming the new ways in which tobacco companies are reaching its desired consumers and that since it is unregulated it is difficult to stop such advertising.
This article talked about how consumers are creating advertising for companies through user-generated content. The article conducted its research by having interviews with 17 participants. This article’s major finding was that people are more likely to trust consumers instead of producers. The article goes on to say, “the advertising potential of UGC on YouTube and blogs could be enormous.” The article says that this potential comes into play because if people see a product that they like on one of these websites then they are more likely to have a positive view of those objects.
This article was published in the New York Times and it talks about how Google decided to buy YouTube from the three founders for 1.65 billion. This article talked about the desire for ownership of YouTube because of the ability to reach consumers. This article highlighted this desire by saying, “YouTube had been coveted by virtually every big media and technology company, as they seek to tap into a generation of consumers who are viewing 100 million short videos on the site every day.” Through this quotation it is easy to understand some of the capabilities of YouTube because producers like the abundant ability to reach consumers on a daily basis.
4) Forecasting Consumer Interest in New Services using Semantic-aware Prediction Model: the Case of YouTube Clip Popularity, Luka Vrdoljak, Vedran Podobnik, and Gordan Jezic.
This article talks about the rise of YouTube from the standpoint of the producer. It highlights how YouTube brings about the possibility for producers to see how consumers react to certain services provided by their company. The article attempts to transfer YouTube clips into semantic profiles that will make it easier for companies to advertise to its consumers.
5) Connecting world youth with tobacco brands: YouTube and the Internet policy vacuum on Web 2.0, Lucy Elkin, George Thomson, and Nick Wilson. http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/YouTube-TC-10-10.pdf
This article also talks about the tobacco industries use of the Internet as a way of reaching its consumers. The major finding in this article was, “A majority (71.2%) of the content was classified as being ‘pro- tobacco’, while 3.7% was classified as ‘anti-tobacco’ and 25.2% as ‘other’ (table 2).” This information highlights how the Internet promotes tobacco use while not being regulated by any organizations. The article goes on to show how videos of people smoking are indirect forms of marketing. The article goes on to say that there are ways for health organizations to get these videos off the Internet, but the process is both time consuming and difficult to prove.
Data, Methods, and Ethics
My research will be utilizing two methods of data collection: archival and auto ethnography. Archival data collection is appropriate for my research because it gives me an idea of why people put up with advertisements on YouTube and whether or not they are still happy with the product that they are viewing. I collected this data by randomly searching through videos and looking at the comments that were made about the videos. I think that this form of data collection properly answers my research question because it helps to answer wether or not people are willing to put up with advertising to watch videos on YouTube. I classified the comments into three categories: positive, negative, or neutral. I collected this material by looking at the most recent comments made on each of the videos. For retrieving this material, I spent 2 hours searching through YouTube and collecting data. During that time I looked at a total of 30 videos and conduct an analysis of the videos. Along with the comments made by these people, I documented how many advertisements were on each web page. The data collection for this part of the research was conducted on March 16th. The criteria that I considered for inclusion into my data was whether or not the person expressed a positive, negative, or neutral tone in their comments on the page. I also decided to exclude any comments that neglected to express any feelings towards the video or YouTube. For example, I decided to not include arguments between people who were commenting on the videos because the data had nothing to do with the video or YouTube. This data collection observes all ethical concerns by not including any of the names of the people who commented on the videos. I removed the date that the comments were made for all of my data because I felt that it might be a way in which someone's anonymity might be compromised. I decided to do this because it respects the individual’s comments. Signed consent forms for this type of data collection was not plausible because it would be impossible to get ahold of everyone who commented on the videos. For the comments that I will be including in my analysis, I will be using pseudonyms so that I could protect their anonymity. Through the archival research I will be able to add a more comprehensive analysis of the feelings people have towards the cost of advertising on YouTube.
Through auto ethnography analysis I compared the cost of watching videos on the Internet and on television. I decided to supplement my archival analysis with auto ethnography analysis because it provides me with a way of contrasting the cost of watching videos on television to watching videos on YouTube. I collected this data by conducting through a two-part experiment. First, I watched an hour of television in which I recorded how much of the time I spent watching commercials. Second, I spent an hour watching videos on YouTube and I recorded how many times I had to watch advertisements between videos. This data collection included how much time I actually spent watching the commercials. I decided to include this information into my research because I wanted to determine if I paid more attention to commercials on the Internet or on television. Since this data collection did not involve anyone else, I did not have to worry about ethical concerns.
Analysis
Through my data analysis of the archival research that I conducted, I found that a majority of the people who watched videos on YouTube were willing to put up with the fifteen to thirty second ads that pop up on YouTube occasionally. On average, each of the videos had 5.25 comments that liked the video, 1.5 comments that disliked the video and 3.45 comments that were neutral about the video. These numbers represent the first three pages of comments on each of the videos. An example of one of the comments that appraised the video is “Youtube wise, this song is kind of old, but it's one of those songs that never gets old. =)” (Robert). Through comments that were similar to this one, we can see how people who view videos with an attitude like this are willing to put up with the cost of watching them. It is easy to infer this because the people are able to overlook the advertisements because of a desire to see these videos. On the other hand, there are comments such as the following quotation that show a sense of despise for the advertisements on YouTube, “Ugh, I agree with you all! Not only is the new channel hard to use, but it deleted my old background and I could not reupload it. I HAVE FURY! CHANGE THE CHANNELS BACK!” (Rebecca). Through this comment it is obvious that the person does not like to put up with the advertisements that come up every once in a while and for this reason he or she probably does not desire to see the videos. Finally, there were some comments that neither liked or disliked the advertisements. The following is an example of this, “I prefer the old channels but the new ones aren't as bad as i thought. i dont mind what happens now” (John). The people who made comments that were similar to this showed that they were neither for nor against the advertisements. Since these people seemed to be oblivious to the advertisements, they probably stilled decided to watch the videos. The following chart shows the distribution of comments from all of the videos that I looked at:
This data concurs with the information that I got from the qualitative data that I got from the comments. Through my archival analysis, I found that a majority (85%) of the people were willing to put up with the advertisements and probably continued to watch the videos. These people wanted the material so bad that they overlooked the inconvenience of the advertisements.
Through my auto ethnography analysis, I found that television spent a lot more time only showing advertisement than the Internet. On television, I found that for the hour of television that I watched, there was fifteen minutes and thirty seconds of commercials. When these commercials came on while I was watching television, a majority (63%) of the time I was not paying attention to the advertisements. I found this information by using two stop watches. One that recorded how long commercials were on instead of the program and the other recorded how much time I spent watching the commercials. For the second part of this, I decided that if I was doing anything else, such as spending time on my computer, going to the bathroom or making something to eat, I would consider it as not paying attention to the commercials. Therefore, out of the fifteen minutes and thirty seconds that commercials were playing on television I watched a total of five minutes and forty four seconds. On the other hand, while I was watching videos on the Internet there was always two ads while the video was playing and every couple of times that I switched videos an advertisement popped up. For the advertisements that popped up, you had to watch from fifteen to thirty seconds of the advertisement. Throughout the hour that I spent watching videos on YouTube, there was a total of three minutes and fifteen seconds of advertisements. During the time while these advertisements were playing, I did not do anything else. I believe that the reason why I did not doing anything else during the fifteen to thirty seconds was because it was such a short amount of time that I decided to just wait until the advertisement was done playing.
From my archival and auto ethnography analyses, I found that although the advertisements on YouTube were inconvenient they cost the consumer less than the advertisements on television. I believe that the combination of these two forms of analysis correctly answer my question because they provide multiple different ways in attempting to answer the question.
Conclusion and Reflections
In conclusion, the cost of watching shows on television is more than the cost of watching videos on the Internet. This is important because it may be a cause that will advance the switch from normal television programming to television being part of the Internet. Through my analysis I found some information that correlated to the data that I found during my literature reviews. The article Consumers’ Reliance on Product Information and Recommendation Found in UGC talks about how the user –generated content is viewed as more trustworthy than advertising generated by producers. This relates to my research because my research found that people are more likely to watch advertising on the Internet than on the television. Through my analysis, I have learned that there is multiple reasons why television is becoming obsolete. Through this analysis, it is obvious that the shortening of advertising is part of the reason television is dying because advertising on the Internet is better for both the consumer and producer. It is beneficial for the consumer because the time spent watching advertisements on the Internet is shorter then that on television. On the other hand, it is beneficial for the producers because the consumers actually watch the advertisements, whereas on television consumers do not always watch the commercials.
Multi-media, Links, Relevant Information, etc.
Here is a YouTube video that shows how to stop advertisements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7FJaWzTcs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7FJaWzTcs
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