YouTube's brilliant ad was one of the biggest stories from Game 1 of the World Series
The YouTube ad behind home plate during Game 1 had baseball fans buzzing.
The ad was perfectly centered on the broadcast making the game look like a YouTube video.
A lot of fans found it annoying, but it still feels like a big win for YouTube.
The Los Angeles Dodgers won Game 1 of the World Series, 3-1, behind a strong pitching performance from Clayton Kershaw and some timely home runs. But despite a brisk 2 hour, 28 minute game and a questionable strike zone, the biggest story from Game 1 may have been an ad.
One of the most valuable pieces of advertising real estate on television is probably the backstop behind home plate, and YouTube came up with a brilliant way to utilize that spot and make it even more valuable.
Reactions to YouTube's home plate ad:
Baseball games are watched by millions and those spots behind home plate are shown on every pitch, hundreds of times each game. During most of Game 1 of the World Series, YouTube had a banner in one of the spots, advertising YouTube TV.
But what made YouTube's banner so brilliant is that their play button logo was perfectly sized and perfectly centered on the screen for the television broadcast. As a result, during any right-handed batter, it looked like the game was a YouTube video and that the viewer needed to click play.
If the point of advertising is to get viewers' attention, this worked like a charm. Social media was flooded with people commenting on the YouTube ad.
Not everybody was amused, as there were plenty of people who described the ad as either "distracting" or "annoying," and called for Fox to either pull it from the game or move it.
But, of course, now websites like ours are writing about the ad, and considering nobody is going to stop using YouTube over this moment, this feels like a huge advertising win for YouTube and their YouTube TV service.
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