Author Archive
AdExchanger has discovered a potential loophole in the video ad economy!
Adweek’s Mike Shields writes that Aol is incentivizing users to watch videos, “The company’s budding syndication arm, AOL On, distributes content to Swagbucks, a rewards site where users earn points that can be redeemed for gift cards and coupons ($1 off Tombstone Pizza, $15 off at the Gap).”
AdExchanger ponders that ”you could be paid to watch videos with Aol.. and then you could take those Swagbucks and potentially pay SpotXchange to SkipIt – or skip video ads. I love the ad economy!”
Read the full article: Yahoo Ad Plans of Yore; OwnerIQ’s Branded Ad Network
SkipIt founder and CEO, Mike Shehan, recently shared his thoughts regarding the future of online media consumption with iMedia Connection. According to Mike:
“There’s no doubt that the media industry has seen dramatic change in the last 15 years. Readership of traditional newspapers has plummeted. Compounding the issue, the traditional newspaper model where classifieds and ads were sold based on circulation (regardless if someone actually read the paper and saw your ad) has been absolutely decimated as advertisers have moved their dollars to more effective, more addressable advertising options.
…We continue to see a wide variety of business models created for accessing content online, making one point very clear: the future of media is paid. Publishers and content providers simply can’t afford to provide content for free without getting something in return. But as some companies are finding out, what they receive in return doesn’t always have to be money or ad dollars, it can be a user’s time or even actions like posting on a brand’s Facebook wall…SkipIt allows viewers to earn opportunities to skip video ads by liking a brand on Facebook or paying a small fee.”
To read more about how online media is trending, and how it may affect both the consumer and publisher, check out the full article.
Hotpockets, microwave popcorn, and Easy Mac all made possible thanks to Mr. Percy Spencer, inventor of the microwave oven.
Spencer invented the first prototype for the microwave oven after visiting a lab where magnetrons were being tested. While standing close to the magnetrons he noticed a candy bar in his pocket was melting. He wasn’t the first to notice this phenomenon, but he was the first to dig deeper. By 1947 he had the first commercial microwave oven, but it wasn’t anything close to the machine you have sitting in your kitchen. This microwave stood 5 ½ feet tall, weighed over 750 pounds and cost an average of $5,000 each!
"Pre-heating? Hah! I think I'll just SkipIt"
It took years of tweaks and changes to get the microwave oven down to a manageable size and price for the average consumer, but by 1975 microwave oven sales surpassed that of gas ranges, and the world was hooked. So next time you stick something in the microwave for a quick heat up, remember that skipping genius Percy Spencer the microwave oven inventor who made that hot pocket possible.
Beam me up Higgs! Well it isn’t quite Star Trek status yet, but scientists have discovered the Higgs Boson Particle could be the link to actual time travel! Skipping time would be the ultimate skip, so how close are we to actually accomplishing a trip through a beam of light?
The discovery of Higgs was the first step, the next is figuring out what can be done. “ If I could manipulate a Higgs field, that would be a first step in making a transporter, but the only way I know of to manipulate the Higgs field is to heat the whole thing up to such an incredible temperature that it’s not surprising you’d disappear anyway,” says Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss. So the question then isn’t how do we use Higgs to disappear, but more how would it be utilized to reappear somewhere else?
These questions may be answered in time as more is discovered about the Higgs Field. Until we know more about Higgs we will still tip our hat to the ultimate time skipper!
Time to pay homage to another “skipping” pioneer. In this episode, we’d like to congratulate Josephine Cochrane, the inventor of what would become the modern day dishwasher. Cochrane was the granddaughter of John Fitch, the inventor of the steamboat, so it would seem the capacity to create was in her blood.
Legend has it that she came up with the invention because her servants were always chipping her fine china. She is said to have exclaimed, “If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I’ll do it myself!”
"Let's see if they can chip my fine china now!"
Cochrane first unveiled her “Cochrane Dishwasher” at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and won the highest prize for “best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work.”
Some might call her response overkill, but here at SkipIt, we simply call it awesome.
In the world of frequent spam, people often wonder what we do with personally identifiable information like email addresses or names. As part of the SkipIt Pledge, we respect customer privacy, and we work hard to make sure that our customers don’t have to be concerned about their security.
While it is true that SkipIt provides reporting to both advertisers and partner websites on what kinds of people are skipping and choosing to watch their ads, we only provide them with aggregate demographic information like age, gender, region, and ethnicity – just enough information to help advertisers do a better job of targeting relevant ads that you might be interested in. They will never have access to your contact information and will never specifically reach out to you directly just because you signed up for SkipIt.
In fact, your information is so safe that SkipIt’s parent company, SpotXchange, was ranked 2nd out of of 150 companies this year for brand safety among rich media and video ad networks and exchanges!
And now that your mind is at ease, just go ahead and Skipit!
What’s the best way to skip ads online? Good question. As you may know, SkipIt is an online service that gives consumers the choice to skip video ads online. It benefits digital publishers by paying them NOT to play a video ad, and benefits advertisers that don’t pay for skipped ads. Consumers skip only when they want to, and can either use the free skips they earn or pay a small amount when they encounter the SkipIt invite.
For those of you into skipping video ads online, we wanted to explain how SkipIt is different than software extensions designed to block online ads. Adblock and Adblock Plus are extensions that can be installed in either Firefox or Chrome web browsers to filter content and block ads. Sounds great at first, but here’s how Adblock stacks up against SkipIt:
- Adblock and Adblock Plus are free to download and install, but they still cost you time. With Adblock, for example, you still have to stare at a black box on your screen where the video ad would have run ( which still takes 15-60 seconds of your time)
- Adblock filters can occasionally block the actual content, not just ads
- You have to manually manage your Adblock filters and subscriptions to sites that are “whitelisted” – that list is ever-changing so can become a headache to constantly update which sites you want to block ads on
- Adblock extensions hurt websites that rely on advertising income to produce quality content and stay in business – some publishers like Hulu are fighting back – if you use Adblock plus, Hulu has you disable it to be able to watch your content
SkipIt is fast, fair and will be everywhere
- SkipIt works on any web browser, and the SkipIt invite is served 20 million times a day, all over the web
- Skip it offers ways to earn free skips to keep your skipping experience free
- SkipIt saves time – when logged into SkipIt, it’s one click to skip, and then go to your video content immediately
- SkipIt is automatic and requires no manual effort or regular maintenance of websites you want to skip ads on
- SkipIt is fair to website publishers – you can skip, and publishers still get paid (often MORE than if the ad had run in the first place)
There is a better way. SkipIt is leading the charge to give consumers more control and choice online, while making sure publishers get paid fairly for their video content, and advertisers don’t pay for ads that are skipped, thus eliminating waste. Everyone wins.
SkipIt Founder and CEO Michael Shehan speaks with Beet.TV about SpotXchange’s new video ad skipping service. Shehan explains the benefits of SkipIt and the response it has had from the industry in this interview:
If you haven’t noticed, we here at SkipIt are big fans of saving time and letting you take control of your online lives. So much so that we would like totake time to honor fellow inventors, theorists, dreamers, record-breakers etc… that have changed the world through their desire to skip things.
In this first installment “SkipIt Pioneers”, we’d like to pay homage to one of the most well known skipping pioneers out there – Albert Einstein. Once an above-average IQ patent clerk, Einstein went on to postulate some of the most radical and game changing physical theories known to man.
One of his most famous postulations was that wormholes (or Einstein-Rosen Bridges) exist throughout the universe and allow matter to skip long distances in space instantaneously. The theory also states that if one were to utilize such wormholes, they would literally travel through time.
While our understanding of skipping through physical space and time is still limited, we have managed to apply this theory to SkipIt and the Internet universe. To Illustrate:
Normally, to get from a website (point a) to content (point b), you must travel along the treacherous “Path of Advertisements”. Like space, the journey can be long, dull, and potentially and full of obstacles that may impede your journey. However, with SkipIt, you can create your own “cyber-wormhole” at the click of a button and access your video content immediately, almost like you are traveling through time.
So, without further adieu, we’d like to tips our hats once more to Einstein, one of the original Skipping Pioneers! SkipIt…SkipIt Good!
Have you ever been presented with a video ad that doesn’t interest you? Have you ever needed to get to your content right away? Do you want to skip ads and have control over you online experience? If you answered “Yes” to any of these, then SkipIt can help!
While advertising helps keep online content free or very inexpensive, all of us have our own reasons for not wanting to sit through video ads sometimes. Fortunately, SkipIt is at your service when you need:
- Choice and Control – SkipIt lets you skip online video ads when you want to, for just a dime at a time. You now have control over which ads to watch and which you want to skip.
- Ease of Use - Ease of Use – SkipIt is simple and easy. With a single click on the SkipIt invite, you can choose to skip a video ad – it’s that easy. If you don’t have an account you can quickly create an account from the SkipIt invitation using Facebook, Twitter or Google or create a SkipIt account. Setting up an account is very quick, and allows you to skip video ads for the first time within seconds.
Sign Up or Sign In using Twitter, Facebook or Google
SkipIt is working with sports, news, entertainment and all types of websites every day to bring SkipIt to the place you like to hang out the most of the web. If you visit a website a lot but they currently don’t offer the ability to skip video ads with SkipIt, just let us know where you want to skip video ads.
There’s a place on the SkipIt.com home page where you can tell us which sites should offer SkipIt. Or you can email you suggestions to help@skipit.com or submit a request at our Help Center. As soon as we get your suggestions we’ll give the site a call and help them integrate so you’ll be able to skip the video ads you choose there, too.
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