In an increasingly more viral world, where people are constantly on YouTube, Hulu, and other video sites, corporations are trying to find new ways to reach their consumer through more and more creative ways. They are all over YouTube and sponsor network TV sites that have their prime-time and high demand shows for broadcast online for free due to these sponsorships. These YouTube videos are huge money makers on their own as 2 billion videos are monetized every week and YouTube users that are deemed as popular enough to be partners, are making six figures every year for just making some videos where they either discuss the merits of a movie, or even just make a complete fool of themselves.
94 of AdAge’s top 100 advertisers are on or have run campaigns on YouTube to try and generate more sales and more hits to their respective sites. These ads haven’t really even been shown to significantly increase web or store traffic as there is still a debate between companies as to if they even work. I was very interested in these concerns, and to see if they actually did work as well as some people thought they would.
It turns out that they do work surprisingly well.
· Purchase intent increases 14% than when viewers see a TV spot for the same product
· 15% increase in people recommending a brand that advertises on YouTube.
o Example
§ 1 in 5 users recommended the YouTube page while it was “taken over” by the ‘X-men Origins : Wolverine’ movie.
§ Eventually, 10% more people saw the movie after seeing the ad on YouTube
These results for the X-men movie could either be a tribute to how well these techniques work, or it could be biased just be another way to drive more ad revenue for Google since the research was done by 20th Century Fox and Google, but I do believe there is some relevance to these findings due to the viral nature of YouTube videos. Even if the consumer did not have a clue about what the advertising on a page was for, they are still going to recommend a funny or amazing video to a friend, who might, in turn, view that product and lead to a purchase.
There are some quite obnoxious ways for companies to access these consumers on YouTube though. For example, by using pop-up ads or ads prior to the video itself, it leads to the consumer being annoying and turned off the brand because they have infiltrated personal space too much. Even with the pop-up blockers that make the effect of these ad types, companies still throw money away on them, when if they are ever seen, the consumer hates it. They are driven to check their pop-up blocker to see if it malfunctioned or what they can do to avoid the same ads in the future. This detracts from brand value and defeats the purpose of online marketing in the first place.
Roddey Player
Sites:
Argaez, Enrique.http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art100.htm
Scott, Jeremy. http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-statistics/
Ads before YouTube videos may be annoying, but when they introduced the ability to "skip" the ad after so many seconds, I appreciated the new feature. I'm not sure if advertising like this is any different than regular TV commercials, however. Yes, they are annoying when you are trying to watch something, but the fact that companies keep advertising in this way shows that it must have a good ROI (ie, people aren't getting annoying and thus not buying the particular brand). It is important, however, to match the nature of the commercial to the content of the video so that the viewer may actually be interested in the product it is selling. Another cool feature is the ability on Hulu to respond whether or not you liked the commercials that came up. Shows where advertising is headed.
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