What do you usually do with the advertisements that are shown before on YouTube?
Shoot this question to any YouTube user, I can assure you, their answer will be either: 1) click on the ‘skip’ button, or 2) block it by installing ad-block softwares like FairBlocker. Even the CEO of FairBlocker admitted to AdWeek that “Display ads are easy to ignore. On YouTube, you see exactly how much time is being wasted.” Besides that, according to Marketing Land, most agencies who carried out surveys found out that video ads don’t always reach the intended target audience.
Watch Advertisements—With A Twist
“When it comes to video ads, everyone skips it. It’s not just us saying this, research has shown that 94% of the users skip it, and that’s a total of 85% of video ads getting skipped,” said Peter Yee, one of the co-founders of VidPays.
In a simple and hassle-free way, a new star mobile video advertising platform called VidPays is here to solve the problem of advertiser-user communication, by allowing advertisers to broadcast their video advertisements to users but with a twist—when users are watching advertisements, they get paid.
It may sound too good to be true, but that’s how VidPays actually works. With a simple slogan, “Watch videos, get paid”, VidPays is an incentive based advertising platform which rewards the users who opt-in to watch videos.
“We believe the users’ time is valuable, and ad viewers are rewarded by the advertisers for their time watching the ads,” the VidPays team said.
The platform emphasises simplicity, “We design this [the app] in a way that doesn’t require any tutorial. We tested it, we gave this app to very old people, 60 to 60 plus, we asked them, ‘Can you figure out what is this and how it works?’. It was literally easy for them to understand,” said the team from VidPays.
How To Watch Videos & Get Paid?
Currently the team is still in the midst of setting up their mobile app. Once it is officially launched, all you need to do is download the VidPays mobile app from iOS or Android, set up your Paypal account, watch advertisements and earn some money.
The team has tested out the platform with a very small scale of users (100 people) to carry out the beta testing phase. The response was positive, thus it led them to set their target for second batch of testing with 2,000 to 3,000 users. If everything goes smooth sailing, they will roll out the app in September. The team also cheekily added that they will quit their day jobs too to pursue VidPays full-time.
Providing A New Source For Side Income
“People are looking for ultimate source of income, any extra buck will be a good source,” said Peter Yee, one of the co-founders of VidPays while sharing his excitement to launch this platform. “Based on our calculation, if every user watch 8 hours of advertisement per day on VidPays, that means they would earn USD7 every day,” he explained. “And the people who work in McDonald’s could just quit their job,” the team jokingly added.
Joke aside, the team would like to revolutionise how the digital industry works, as well as help people to earn some extra pocket money. The platform is more targeted towards people who spend a lot of idle time, for instance while waiting for public transport, or waiting for friends to meet at a coffee shop.
Apart from that the team also shared that they pitched this idea to a cab driver and he was impressed with it. “The taxi driver said, ‘Oh that’s really good, because I have to wait for a really long time for the next passenger.’ ” Peter added, “Immediately we checked our stats, he signed up!”
How about people who cheat by leaving their phone running on the side for the ads to be played non-stop? The VidPays team said there will be a feature that makes it compulsory for users to touch the screen while the ads are being played.
Verdict: 3/5
One thing I was concerned about is the sustainability, in terms of how VidPays is going to keep their users from losing interest on this platform.
To do so, VidPays pays their user with PayPal. Of course, it’s attractive because it pays their user in USD. However, in return users would have to be patient with the video-watching process (approximately 8 hours of watching for USD7). That being said, the team spoke to us and said they’re not aiming to replace their users’ full-time job with VidPays—although that is their ultimate dream.
Nonetheless, we will be sure to keep an eye on VidPays when they launch the platform officially. If you’re interested and want to sign up and be part of VidPays’ second batch of testing, you can do so here for free.
