Youtube advertising- how cack-handed is it?

Pay money, select a video and choose how to promote it. That sounds so simple, doesn't it? The reality is not so simple and almost always requires assistance from the Youtube helpdesk in order to get the advertising system to do anything whatsoever.

A month ago, I was asked to promote a political candidate via Youtube. All I can say is NEVER AGAIN. As somebody who has passed a Law School Admission Test to do the Juris Doctorate and as somebody who also has a degree in computing, it can't be assumed that I'm in any way dumb.

The entire Youtube advertising system looks and feels like some geek designed it in the 1990s for other geeks to use. It's extremely user unfriendly to say the minimum. After waiting a week for the adverts to start showing, nothing had shown then Youtube said the "bid" for the adverts had to rise from 2 cents to 15 cents. Now, given that people just click off adverts within 5 - 10 seconds, that just seems expensive. No wonder Google is so rich!

The next problem was that somebody at Youtube/Google looked at an advert and threatened to terminate the advertising account for "incorrect text capitalisation". What kind of joke is that when the text is the same in all the literature as on the Youtube advert?

In terms of advertising display - it's not displaying as often as it should and is generating no return clicks. Essentially, Youtube advertising appears to be a complete and total waste of time, effort, patrience and money.

My personal recommendation to those planning to advertise on Youtube is just to spend the money on beer instead.

In addition to my adwords (which Google can cancel if they want - personbally I don't give a hoot since it's just a money-soaking waste of time) I and a friend run adsense. This means that we get paid if people click on adverts placed on our videos.

In terms of income from the video content we place on Youtube, one of my friend's videos has 8,000 viewes to date. Adverts show every time. Her income from Adsense from that video - maybe 10 cents at most.

So - youtube for advertising or income. Don't hold your breath nor expect more than a dollar a decade income. Advertising - just write your advert on a piece of paper and stick it to the underside of your desk. The same number of people will respond to it and it'll be cheaper than Youtube.