Why Youtube Advertising is Worth Every Dollar

This is why ever since the invention of the television, viewership slowly moves away from radio, and radio ads become cheaper due to less demand.

Fast forward to the present day, we know that this is happening again. Media viewership is now split between TV and online video media, with the majority of young people now preferring to stay updated, to learn, and to entertain themselves with online platforms such as Youtube.

Youtube alone garners the attention of over 2 billion loyal users, and many more who are unregistered — they all contribute to one billion hours of views daily. It is the second-largest search engine in the world after Google, and the first choice for any business wanting to establish their brand using video marketing.

Youtube advertising types at a glance

Not only does it occupy a large space (around 80% of the video width with the small video player), it’s also located above the video suggestions list. This smart list has consistently and correctly identified the likeliest videos to be watched by the user, making it a habitual attention zone.

Overlay Ads

A semi-transparent box on the lower right corner will warn users of an incoming ad 5 seconds before the ad appears, so viewers aren’t surprised and the ad won’t feel overly intrusive. Skippable ads allow viewers to skip the ad after 5 seconds.

When a viewer skips the ad, the advertiser is not charged.  If the viewer watches the entire ad, or the ad has been watched for 30 seconds or more, the advertiser is charged a fee.

Ads like these typically last no more than 5 seconds. Bumper ads are a variant of a non-skippable ad which must be watched before the video content can begin.

Sponsored Cards

Even if your ad is not completely watched, if your message is clear, straight to the point, and evokes positive emotions (humorous, inspirational, surprising, etc.), your audience will remember your brand even if they skipped your ads. To put it in another way, that is free advertising.

You must not be in a hurry to get people off Youtube and onto your website. This isn’t a hard-fast rule, since there are ways to convert viewers into site visitors by posting a link in the video description.

However observations have shown that when viewers like your video (ads), they are unlikely to visit your website right away, unless they are familiar with your brand. How do they familiarize themselves with a brand? They visit your channel to judge whether your business is authoritative. If your Youtube channel looks abandoned and only has a couple of videos, forget about seeing them on your website.

They would look at the number of subscribers, views, ratings, content collection, even your upload frequency, community engagement and your profile’s completeness.

Put yourself in your viewer’s shoes for a moment. If a brand only uses Youtube to advertise, and contributed nothing else to the Youtube community, would you trust that brand?

Advertising on Youtube is worth every dollar only if you have optimized your channel (as shown in the example above).

The cost of producing content is way less than the cost of making TV ads, but creating GOOD content takes skill and experience. If you’re keen to try to create your content yourself, here are the steps we’d recommend: