YouTube has over a billion users and each day hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube videos are seen and i am one of them and until today i thought i was being smart and sticking it to the man by clicking the 'Skip Ad' button but turns out me and many others are doing exactly what they want us to do as they get paid whether i sit and watch the advert or skip it anyway.
If we want to watch the original video to 1980s smash hit 'Dance Hall Days' or a cat humorously leaping 4ft in the air when it sees a cucumber, then we need to wait the required five seconds before we can relive our teenage years with a bit of Wang Chung in fluffy jumpers.
When i always thought it was YouTube being a bit considerate and not making us sit through a numbing 60 seconds of some company trying to flog us shampoo or sanitary towels, it's actually YouTube making sure they get paid.
The video site hits us with two types of adverts, the unskippable kind where you have no choice but to sit and watch and the skippable one where after five seconds you can get on with hearing Wang Chung in their full 1980's glory.
The YouTube model is they get paid if the full advert is watched or, and here's the sneaky bit, if the video advert is clicked and by clicking the 'Skip Ad', yep, you are clicking the video advert and therefore sending revenue fee towards the YouTube bank account.
For YouTube, it's a win-win situation as they get paid either way although for us viewers, it's a form of advertising that we can't help but top up YouTube coffers.
So where i thought clicking the Skip Ad or wandering off and letting the advert play out to an empty chair was a small rebellion against the fat cat advertisers stuffing unwanted wares down our throat, YouTube still rack it in but still in my mind months of work and millions of pounds spent on an advert that i either skip or walk away from is still wasted so up yours advertising fat cats and as Wang Chung said, 'In our dance hall days, We were cool on cries'.
Whatever that means.
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