In a recent post we discussed ways to skip online video ads and why SkipIt is fair for everyone – consumers, publishers and advertisers. Now we want to compare how SkipIt stacks up to another ad skipping technology called TrueView.
You might have heard of YouTube. You might, in fact, watch tons of videos on YouTube. If so, you have probably skipped a video ad on YouTube courtesy of their service TrueView. Here’s the difference between theirs and ours:
TrueView – a product that is available on YouTube only
- What’s not to love about ad skipping? We get that. But we also know that ad skipping can hurt websites that are just trying to make money from the content they offer for free to the viewer. You Tube can afford to offer free ad skipping because YouTube has more than 4 billion video streams per day! YouTube can afford to experiment with their 4 billion a day video streams — it’s not a big revenue risk if they offer ad skipping and lose that small percentage of revenue. Most publishers don’t even come close to that volume of video streams. Since most websites are not YouTube, they need to make money from every visitor.
- On YouTube with TrueView, ad skipping comes at no cost to consumer, which encourages the habit of always skipping for free. But free in this case means getting “something for nothing.” When TrueView was first rolled out, only 30% of viewers were skipping ads. Now people are skipping 70% of the time, but without regard for how the “free” part of that equation negatively impacts their favorite publishers. Over the years, advertising has paid the bills for radio, TV and now online content – and some consumers are willing to bear the costs to skip (satellite radio, DVRs, premium subscriptions, etc).
- TrueView claims that its ad skipping solution should help promote more creative video ads. But will laundry detergent EVER be interesting?
How SkipIt is different than TrueView
- SkipIt is fair to publishers! Most publishers don’t have billions of video streams, so they must maximize value of each and every video ad opportunity. SkipIt pays publishers MORE than what they would have been paid had they played the video ad for you. They love it because it keeps their websites clutter-free and creates a better user experience. They’re rewarded for that.
- SkipIt does cost a small fee to the consumer, but that fee helps pay publishers to keep their websites clutter-free, and advertisers don’t have to pay for skipped ads. More importantly, there are ways to earn free skips at SkipIt.com, so for those who want to pay to get to the front of the line – they can pay for SkipIt. Others might want to earn free skips to keep skipping, and SkipIt offers that too.
- SkipIt isn’t limited to one website. Soon SkipIt will be everywhere beyond YouTube, and we want to ensure you can skip there too.
We are glad that ad skipping is becoming more mainstream. But we also love our free content online and know that it’s not free. SkipIt helps give consumers the choice of when they want to skip, where they want to skip. And is fair to everyone to boot.
SkipIt is dedicated to providing online consumers the wants and needs they deserve – letting you skip pre-roll video ads, making your life easier and saving you a lot of time.
In our third episode of “SkipIt Pioneers”, we would like to give thanks to Samuel Morse, who is a valuable Skipping Pioneer. The Yale College student started out as an avid painter and created some impressive artworks but underwent life changes. We’d like to think it was for the better.
After his painting career he would go on and be credited with inventing one of the most important inventions in our history: the telegraph and the Morse code. The Morse code would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world and is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.
How did his invention come about? After receiving a letter from a horse messenger that his “wife was convalescent”, Morse immediately left his home to go visit her. But by the time he arrived, she had already been buried. He grew tired of having to wait for important letters that could have been communicated immediately, making life easier and saving a lot of time.
At SkipIt, we’ve taken a page out of Morse’s book. We’ve invented our own technology to make your life easier, stress free and save you time. We made SkipIt, the modern day version of the telegraph, where you can skip pre-roll video ads while you view online videos – saving you the hassle of taking the time to wait for ads to be delivered.
Even though almost a century has passed since the telegraph and the Morse code were brought to our attention, we are still inventing technologies that will make our lives a lot easier and stress free, something Morse pioneered.
Hats off to Samuel Morse for being a Skipping Pioneer. Enjoy SkipIt and skip on!
At SkipIt, we appreciate skipping lots of things, not just skipping video ads. And guess what? So do our world’s top athletes now and again. In fact, 14-time gold medal Olympian, Michael Phelps, recently announced that he will SKIP swimming in one of his signature events, the 200 meter men’s freestyle, at the London Olympics so he can focus more of his energy on relays for the USA swim team. While Michael was on track to win the event again this year (he won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the trials this year), his coach, Bob Bowman, has said that “there would be no regrets about skipping out on the chance for an encore.”
So there you have it, fellow skippers! Even the world’s best athletes skip things in life! Now go ahead and start skipping video ads so you can watch Michael take the gold in his other 7 events.
At SkipIt, we believe in making our customers’ lives just a bit easier in every way possible. That’s why signing up to use our video ad skipping service is so simple and, even better, free!
When you see a SkipIt invite while watching videos on your favorite site, just click on it and you’ll see a few options on how to create an account. You can sign in using your Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts. Or for those who are not so socially inclined, you can sign up directly by creating an account with SkipIt at www.SkipIt.com.
If you keep yourself signed in to SkipIt, anytime you see the SkipIt prompt on the top left corner of your beloved videos, just click on it and it will automatically skip it and directly move on to the video content you want to watch! And that’s how you SkipIt!
We here at SkipIt like to win. But we like to share too. That’s why we created SkipIt in the first place – to give folks more control over their online experience with an innovative new service in the advertising industry. We launched SkipIt at the right time, because there’s a movement afoot on Madison Avenue to make online ads as relevant and engaging as possible. We’re consumers too! We know that not everyone will like every ad – that’s just not possible. But since advertisers essentially pay for all the content we consume online, we wanted to address consumer frustration with better advertising without hurting advertisers in the process. They’re paying the bills, they should have a say too!
So, here’s how it works for advertisers:
- When people click on the SkipIt invite and skip a video ad, that advertiser doesn’t pay for that skipped ad
- The website that it played on (the publisher) gets paid by SkipIt, and then credits the advertiser for that skipped ad
- Advertisers like it because their ad dollars are being used efficiently – they aren’t wasted on people that don’t have time, or just aren’t interested in watching video ads
The SkipIt Ecosystem
SkipIt even covers other advertiser costs. We will credit advertisers for their ad serving and ad operations costs for all video ads that run through the SpotXchange marketplace that were skipped. Other ad skipping solutions out there either benefit the publisher or the advertiser, but not both like SkipIt does.
How else do we make things fair for advertisers? We are working with handfuls of advertisers to design ways for consumers to earn free skips. For example, soon, consumers will be able to go to SkipIt.com and interact with select advertiser offers in exchange for free skips in their SkipIt accounts. Some folks will want to pay for skips, some will want to earn free skips, and there will soon be plenty of ways to earn free skips. Either way, we want to ensure advertisers aren’t paying when people skip their video ads.
SkipIt is the fairest ad skipping solution on the market. Everyone wins in some way. Your favorite websites get to keep creating good content and offer you the choice to skip. Advertisers don’t pay for skipped ads and will soon have the choice of interacting with consumers that WANT to hear from them. And most importantly, YOU, the consumer, have more control online. ‘Bout time.
Stay tuned as SkipIt becomes THE solution for bypassing online video ads. We’ll continue to work hard for you, publishers and advertisers in the meantime.
Skip It good.
At SkipIt we take your satisfaction seriously.
Hey all you SkipIt fans (or soon to be SkipIt fans), We take your satisfaction seriously. Seriously!
We recognize that there are all kinds of products on the internet that ask you to sign up for a free account or may even ask you to save payment information. The problem is they’re not all straight forward about what happens if you don’t like the service. Well, things are different at SkipIt. The SkipIt team prides itself on striving to give you the best customer experience possible on the internet. That’s why we’ve built the SkipIt business based off of the SkipIt Pledge. Basically, if you’re not satisfied with your experience with SkipIt – The product for skipping video ads on the internet, neither are we.
SkipIt Pledge
At SkipIt we take your satisfaction seriously.
We monitor our SkipIt partners across the web to make sure you’re getting a consistent and honest experience each and every time you use SkipIt. We back it all up with the SkipIt Pledge.
If at any time you’re not satisfied with your SkipIt experience we’ll do what’s in our power to make it right, or we’ll return your unused balance. It’s that simple. No crazy hoops to jump through. We want you to have a great experience while you’re using SkipIt and we want you to have that same great experience when you decide it’s not for you, too. SkipIt respects your security and privacy and we only implement policies that put you first. It’s easy to get a hold of us and that’s the way it should be.
Just visit our help center to let us know what we can do for you.
You’re the reason we’re here, and we pledge to you that your experience will be sweet.
Skip on!
So there you go. As you can see whether you’re watching movies online, playing online games or watching today’s top stories on a news site where SkipIt is supported we’ll do right by you if you’re not satisfied.
Check out what Denverites think of online video ads as the SkipIt team goes around Larimer Square asking people when and where they would SkipIt (even beyond video advertising)!
And don’t forget to let us know where you would like to SkipIt. Blammo!
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.
We here at SkipIt are not only about saving time but creating a new product that will break through and change the industry.
In our second episode of “SkipIt Pioneers,” we bring you Karl Benz. The German engineer was always thinking about new ways to implement his great ideas, and one of those ideas was to create a gasoline-powered automobile.
As a young man, Benz grew tired of seeing horse-wagons carrying people around or watching people walk to places that would always take forever to get to. He knew if he could create a gas-powered automobile to skip all those scenarios, people would utilize it and get to their destination in no time. Why walk somewhere, when you have a gas-powered automobile, saving you precious time?
We understand how that can feel. That’s why we made SkipIt, the modern version of Karl Benz’s automobile, allowing you to skip digital video ads while everybody else is stuck walking through them.
We give many thanks to Karl Benz, another Skipping Pioneer, for changing history! Now it’s our turn, with your help, to change the industry. So go ahead and just SkipIt!
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!