The ABC’s Australian Story – brought to you by Head & Shoulders

Tim Burrowes

March 9, 2010 4:23

The screengrab below may not look like much, but it shows the historic moment that a TVC first ran next to ABC content. Head & Shoulders had the honour of advertising next to the flagship Australian Story.

I spotted it on YouTube a few moments ago.

In the last week or two I’ve noticed the video sharing site cautiously experimenting with pre-roll ads across its content. Despite the fact that I spend a LOT of time on YouTube, I’d say I’ve seen pre-roll ads perhaps five times, so they’re doing it subtly so far.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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4 COMMENTS

Aaron 9 Mar 10

Surely there’s something about this in the YouTube Ts and Cs that lets Google run ads on ABC content?

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Duncan 9 Mar 10

What the update from YouTube says.

Ads on YouTube are opt in, always have been. Someone at the ABC has to have turned this on.

If you hit Google and search, I’m pretty sure this came up when the ABC launched their YouTube channels as well, and the no-ads thing was mentioned at the time.

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