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How Youtube is Killing the Art of Advertising

// oktober 7th, 2009 // Mumbo Jumbo

In the old days public media advertising was an art. There were lines you couldn’t cross, there were rules you had to follow and besides that, you had to pay according to the advertising model you picked. There was a certain control. Since the introduction of the www and media such as YouTube, these lines and rules are slowly disappearing.

Like everything else in the world that is built to be free and easy, YouTube is also being abused.

Before you continue reading, I would like to point out that my intention is not to talk junk about Youtube. On Youtube everybody has a chance to be somebody, which I think is great.

Now. Let me tell you what drove me to write this article.

As you hopefully know this blog is brand new. While building a blog there are a lot of things to be kept in mind, such as the layout.

Wordpress is a great program but when it comes to the design of my blog, as anybody else without any knowledge of PHP, I am completely dependent on the available themes throughout the internet.

My search for a great theme on google led me to the website of a certain e-commerce theme - since the point of this article is not to denigrate other online business owners, I’ve decided not to mention the name of the website.

The layout of the website looked professional and trustworthy. The landing page displayed a YouTube-video presenting the features of this theme.

They claimed it was easily customizable and fully flexible. The selling price was $ 97,-.

After reading the testimonials of a couple of ’Big guys’ in the business I decided to pay the full price and download it.

After installing the theme onto Wordpress I started customizing it. Quickly I realized the theme was only customizable to a limit. I could choose the theme colors, pick between a one, two or three column layout, one or no sidebar and I was able to upload my own header.

I didn’t want to give in to my dissapointment, I decided to go with it. I customized everything I could to give it a personal look.

After saving my customizations I viewed my website: blank. My published articles were gone and it was black where my header should be.

I decided to contact the designer of the theme to come up with a sollution. Till today I haven’t received an answer to my problem. Recently I sent an e-mail asking for a refund: no answer.

Since I am a salesman myself, I felt kicked in a certain private place for not seeing through all the sales talk and special effects in the promotional video.

I understand that a big part of being a salesman consists of beautifying the truth and keeping information to yourself that might blow off the sale. Which is ok, in the end it’s the consumer who is responsible for his decision, right?

It took me a couple of days to swallow the shame. But then I started wondering, how is it possible that people like this can actually go public with their rubbish?

The people behind YouTube keep their service nice and tidy. Services such as marking unwanted items and filters for violent and/or pornographic content make it a great, friendly service. But there is no rule in their community guidelines forbidding users to add content containing untrue or misleading  information.

Since it is a difficult task to compose such a rule, I understand they haven’t added such a guideline. Because WHAT exactly is misleading information? And WHEN is a promotional video misleading?

Still I believe that the opportunity to publish your scams and rubbish free of charge on a powerful network shouldn’t be that easy.

There should be some kind of sollution to this problem. The ability to mark offensive content is a step in the right direction.

Maybe somewhere in YouTube’s Terms of Agreement there should be a line making it prohibited to post video’s containing misleading content. Or maybe members with the intention to use the service as an advertising medium should be asked for a small fee? What’s your idea?

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