More than 3 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.
I think that warrants being said another time: more than 3 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day!
You shouldn’t need another reason to, at the very least, consider adding video or even other types of advertising on YouTube to your marketing campaign, especially if you have an existing TV campaign. Let’s take a look at why.
The Research
New research from Google and marketing research company Ipsos (story via ClickZ) indicates that when TV spots appear again in YouTube pre-roll ads, consumer recall improves. And “improves” is putting it lightly. In the study, people who watched both YouTube and TV ads increased their brand recall by 200% compared to those who exclusively saw the TV ad. Also of note is that those who just watched a YouTube ad had 150% better brand recall than those who only watched a TV ad. Needless to say, video advertising on YouTube has the potential to be very, very effective for brands, especially if combined with a traditional TV campaign.
The Social/Traditional Connection
Back in June of this year, I wrote about the importance and benefits of strategically linking traditional and social media. While that blog was more about the connection between the two in a very literal sense (for example see a TV spot, then go online to see more), and keeping your social and traditional strategies inline, the above research indicates that, at least for YouTube, awareness-driven results can be seen even more simply than that. Running your consistent brand marketing across on and offline channels will get you higher recall. If it’s awareness your institution is after and you are willing to or already have produced video, YouTube may be one of your best tickets for getting traction online.
Establishing a Presence and YouTube’s Recent Changes
YouTube’s redesign has made a lot of headlines recently, and with good reason. One of the biggest changes, often overlooked because it’s not a visually obvious design change, is how YouTube has become more social. You can now connect to Facebook and Google+ to see what your friends are posting, right within the YouTube interface. Google has also added a YouTube sharing icon on every Google+ page. In addition to more than 3 billion videos a day, social factors are increasingly important to consider when deciding where to invest your marketing dollars, and these changes move YouTube up a notch since they encourage users to spend more time on the site. For more information about YouTube’s recent changes, you can read YouTube’s blog post here.
“Advertising has changed, and traditional advertising alone no longer works.”
That’s the first sentence you’re greeted with in the above video which promotes the idea of building brands on YouTube. While the video’s focus is on the power of a branded YouTube Channel and video content, the overall message remains clear: the advantages of being in the YouTube environment are clear. Before doing any video (or other) advertising on YouTube, be sure you have an established presence on the site and a customized YouTube Channel. If you saw the latest Will Ferrell commercials for Old Milwaukee you probably laughed. What’s not a laughing matter is Old Milwaukee doesn’t even have a YouTube Channel to showcase them.
Video Advertising on YouTube
The video above briefly shows off how YouTube’s TrueView ads work. TrueView ads are a family of formats that focus on giving viewers choice and control over which ad messages they want to see and when. YouTube only charges you only when a viewer has chosen to watch your ad, which make budgeting and analyzing metrics easy. If you’re familar with Google AdWords you’re in luck, as you can now create and manage these within AdWords. TrueView ads come in four varieties: in-stream ads, in-search ads, in-slate ads, and in-display ads. You can read more about these interesting types of ads here.
In addition to TrueView ads, whose focus is on giving the user a choice to watch, YouTube also offers the more conventional in-stream ads. This one-sheet captures the information, and here’s a demo of an in-stream ad. They can be a maximum 15 seconds for short form video (under 10 minutes) or up to 30 seconds for long form (over 10 minutes). The ad can appear either when a user initiates video play in the beginning (pre-roll, what the study focused on), at a time during (mid-roll), or after the video (post-roll). either in the beginning (pre-roll), at points in between (mid-roll), or after (post-roll). A major tip to consider is that if you choose to run one of these ads, consider running a companion display ad along side it for extra punch.
Interested in other types of advertising on YouTube besides video? See their options here.
All in all, we encourage you to strongly consider adding video advertising on YouTube to your marketing campaign. As the saying goes, it’s where the eyeballs are. If you already have relatively new TV spots and if your budget allows, there is no reason to not get them into advertising rotation online. We all want to create video that goes viral, but tried and true online advertising should never be ignored.
