YouTube vs TV: which has more adverts?

We compare the frequency and length of advert breaks on YouTube videos and live TV.

Transcript

00:00So, you've been watching YouTube quite a lot recently and you've noticed it feels like

00:07there's quite a lot of adverts and maybe in the age of streaming and online content it's

00:15been a while since you've watched any terrestrial TV. So you might be wondering, is there more

00:20adverts on TV or on YouTube? Well, I'm tech writer Matt Mohn-Hickson and I decided to

00:28investigate. So I watched a bunch of videos around 15 to 20 minutes or about the same length

00:36of an average TV show like you know your sort of half an hour TV series, your episodes of

00:43The Chase or you know Tipping Point and that was an hour long and then I compared it to

00:51a TV show on ITV, the aforementioned Tipping Point. I watched it was Tipping Point

00:59Lucky Stars which is like a celebrity version of it and I watched an episode of that and I

01:05timed how long the ad breaks were and how often they were and then I'd also watched a bunch of

01:11YouTube videos to see when the ad breaks were and how long and if you could skip them. So,

01:18I found that there are more stoppages in a YouTube video on the whole, especially if it's

01:26shorter. Obviously it depends if the videos are monetized, if they're not monetized there won't

01:31be ad breaks because there's no adverts on them but for videos that do have ad breaks

01:38and these were all under 30 minutes I watched, usually I tend to watch longer ones but

01:44for this purpose I watched shorter videos and generally speaking there'd be an ad break before

01:51the starts which is not dissimilar from watching TV on terrestrial TV to be honest.

01:58You get about two adverts would pop up but usually I could skip within about 10 seconds

02:05and then there'd be a mid video ad break and then maybe a second mid video ad break depending

02:14on the video I guess depends how popular it is and how many people want to advertise and then

02:19at the end if you didn't stop the video if you just let the video you know if you're doing

02:23something else and it just kept on rolling it would go into another advert break. Some of the

02:29videos also have sponsorship inside the videos so obviously you can't skip them but on a YouTube

02:36video generally speaking unless the adverts are really short you probably will be able to skip

02:42after about 15 seconds so it's annoying because it's breaking up the video pretty regularly but

02:49you don't have to see a lot of adverts you can skip them pretty quick whereas when I was watching

02:54Tipping Point Lucky Stars on ITV it had less ad breaks than a 15-20 minute YouTube video

03:03it stopped less it had three advert breaks that I timed but they were significantly longer and

03:11you can't skip if you're watching live obviously if you've recorded a program on your TiVo box or

03:17your Skybox or other boxes that allow you to record things you can fast forward through them

03:23I'm not talking about this here we're talking about live Terrestrial TV and so the advert breaks

03:29were generally between two minutes and three and a half minutes so it's quite a long break

03:35you know long enough I guess to go and get a cup of tea or go to the toilet so yeah significant

03:41advert breaks less of them but longer whereas YouTube generally speaking there's more so your

03:48videos are interrupted more regularly but you can skip them pretty quickly so they kind of just fade

03:54into the background you sort of get used to it whereas TV ad breaks are more noticeable because

03:59they're longer unless you've got a you know you've recorded it on your fancy box and you're able to

04:05fast forward through it so yeah that was my findings it's yeah more ad breaks on a YouTube video

04:13but skippable less ad breaks on TV longer