The Advantages of YouTube Advertising
YouTube has changed the way we access video content, and it has also opened up a whole new avenue for video advertising. While for a long time, even after the advent of the internet age, video advertising was almost completely confined to TV. Now, YouTube advertising provides a very viable alternative route with a number of distinct advantages.
Reach
One of the advantages of YouTube advertising is its extensive reach, thanks to levels of traffic that are frankly immense. Worldwide, the site gets over a monthly billion unique visitors and more than four billion video views each day. It’s the world’s second most-visited website, behind only Facebook. YouTube’s search function receives more queries than any search engine besides Google. With so many users and so much activity, even niche businesses have the chance to find a relevant audience worth reaching out to.
Accessibility
YouTube is very accessible as an advertising platform. In fact, it is more accessible than most other video advertising platforms despite being among the most useful and powerful. Most of this is down to cost. For example, TV advertising – which is probably the video advertising outlet that most readily leaps to mind – is incredibly powerful, but is out of reach for many businesses because of simple financial reasons. Smaller businesses cannot afford or justify the cost, and neither can businesses that would find it hard to target their audience properly through a TV broadcast and could not guarantee effective results. YouTube advertising, on the other hand, is a far-reaching and effective way of utilising the power of video adverts, yet is financially within the reach of even smaller businesses.
Easy to Measure
YouTube advertising shares one key characteristic with most other online marketing avenues, but which other major video advertising channels lack; it is easy to measure. Because all activity takes place in an online environment where it can be precisely recorded, you get precise, accurate figures for key metrics and statistics where other avenues would only give you estimates. You can find out exactly how many people have seen your advert and exactly how many have clicked through. Other figures, such as the number of likes and shares, will be similarly precise. Online advertising is also far more likely to generate comments from users, which provides you with a useful source of feedback that can be used to refine your approach over time.
SEO Benefits
Search engines are most people’s go-to place when looking for things on the web, so optimising websites and other content for search engines is big business. YouTube adverts can help with this. By linking to relevant pages and complementary content on your website, you can build up valuable backlinks. The videos themselves will also have a search presence. Back in 2012, it was reported by Marketing Week that nearly 70% of Google’s top 100 search listings contained video results. Advertising on Youtube is an extra way to get seen not just by YouTube users, but by users of search engines as well.
Posted by Luke Cairns, owner of Butchers Hook Video, a corporate video production company based in Brighton and London, UK