The introduction of ads integrated into YouTube videos has made quite a splash in the media; coverage has been widespread. The announcement of the ads on Broadcasting Ourselves, YouTube’s own blog, though, has been met with a less-than-enthusiastic response based largely on a misunderstanding of which videos will have the spots added.

The relevant part of the blog post reads:

...we’ve been working with select partners to improve YouTube’s presentation of advertising on their videos in a manner that brings you creative, compelling content and should also increase revenue flow to artists and content owners…Today we’re offering select partners the ability to incorporate YouTube InVideo ads into their content.

Despite what struck me as a pretty clear explanation, a lot of the comments suggest readers believe the ads will be inserted into any video, not just those of the 1,000 or so media media companies that have licensed their videos to YouTube:

• you’re ruining users videos
• Do what you like with your partners, consult other video makers on advertising content before going near their videos.
• would take copyrighted contents off the network, because viacom or whatever asks, but whn it’s user copyrights, they dont give a damn !!! !!!! !!! These videos are made by us, for us, and should not see they creative content impeded !!

Other comments suggest any in-video advertising is a bad idea, that the current revenue program is badly managed, and that the company’s claims to have developed the technology is false. While a few comments support advertising and even explain how the ads will work in more detail than Google did, nobody from Google or Google-owned YouTube has returned to offer any answers to the 75 comments (as of right now) posted since the item appeared yesterday. There’s even a request for links to samples that has gone unheeded. One YouTube user has already posted a video objecting to the program.

To their credit, YouTube has let all the negative comments appear, but why post something to a blog if you’re not willing to engage in the conversation it produces? That’s what press releases are for.

In case you haven’t heard about the program, ads will appear 15 seconds after a video has started and occupy the bottom 20% of the video screen. Clicking on the ad will pause the video you’re watching to show you the ad, which is clickable. When the ad ends, the video resumes playing. If you don’t click, the ad vanishes after 10 seconds. The videos are from companies like Disney, NBC, CBS, the BBC, and the like, each of which would pay an additional $20 per thousand views to have the ads appear. The semi-transparent ads—reminiscent of the TV network promotions for shows appearing at the bottom of the screen during other shows—look like this: