How to download video ads from Youtube?

Question

I'd like to download some (I mean a lot of) video ads from YouTube (not the videos, but the ads that are played before them) for research purposes.

Any suggestions for tools or ways this can be achieved? I won't mind some programming on my hack but I currently have no idea how. Also, YouTube is not an requirement; video ads from other video sites work for me too.

Answer 1

A far simpler solution is to right click on the video window and select Stats for nerds.

A list of stats will appear, look for Video ID and copy it - only copy the part of the string before the / character, as you only need the Video ID, not the sCPN string. (For example I was looking for a Sam Ovens video, but the advert video had no clickable link, so I used the Stats for nerds feature and found the ID: a-C4m7teAAU).

Then simply append the video ID onto the standard YouTube watch URL like so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-C4m7teAAU

Update

Some people are saying that this no longer works. I just tried it on a Samsung video and it still works fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-qPNT7E0k