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Comment by Pulcinella | Hacker News Reader

How "valuable" is a viewer of YouTube channel like that versus a viewer of the food network. For example, I've heard that many viewers of various toy unboxing videos are young children. I can't imagine most advertisers want to pay money only to have their ad viewed by somebody with basically no disposable income.

Edit: My comment was not about advertising to children directly. I was using that as an example. I'm not sure if a view on YouTube has the same value as a view in more traditional media (e.g. Television).

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I'm guessing by this comment that you don't have children? Kids are great customers. They are impulsive and buy into whatever flashy thing is on the TV or the current toy their friend has they must have too. The money flows from the pocket of mom, dad, grandparents, and other adult family members directly into junk for the kids. The kids are then bored of hot new toy X after a week and the cycle repeats.

You don't think advertisers want to market to children? I hope this was sarcasm and I'm just missing the joke.

Have you walked down the cereal aisle in a grocery store?

Have you seen YouTube advertisements? Half the time the ad has nothing to do with the video. I've seen ads for cement mix in front of video game videos.

If I want to advertise my stand mixer, I don't want to have to pay when my ad is seen by a 5 year old just because a video about gummy bears was tagged "culinary."

I understand advertisers want to "get 'em while they're young" and want children to pester their parents to buy things, but 2 million views from children is not the same thing as 2 million views from the 18-35 bracket.

I think Youtube advertisements are very targeted toward you, and not necessarily relevant to the video. Google uses the information it has on you and plays the products that have paid the most for your demographic from what I understand.

My 3-year-old illiterate child keeps saying "skip" and pounding the skip button until it becomes available, every time he sees an YouTube add.

Hypothesis: maybe they're all like that?

(I do limit and monitor his YouTube use)

Considering just how susceptible children are to advertising brainwashing, you might shed the guilt of skirting video ads on YouTube by installing an ad blocker (ex: uBlock Origin). Morality of blocking ads aside, I wouldn't want my children watching the number of pre-roll ads that YouTube pushes out. As a side effect, your child won't spend an hour a week clicking a skip button, or sitting though the ads that aren't even skippable.

The toy unboxing channels exist entirely because they are so effective for attracting advertisers. Those weird 'Spiderman vs. pregnant Elsa' style videos are so popular for the same reason. Kids are perhaps the most valuable demographic for Youtube.

All in all I get the impression that Youtube had difficulty commanding the kind of money that TV advertisements generate, even before the recent ad crisis.

yes but I would argue that product endorsements and advertising to young impressionable minds is extremely valuable.

The example I'd like to highlight is the success Apple gained through placing Macs everywhere in education. Students almost certainly cannot afford these machines but everyone has one and that's better marketing than anything else.

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