YouTube receives over 70 million unique visitors per month! Having only launched three years ago come December, any Marketer would be happy to receive that amount of visits to their site in just three short years.
Announced Wednesday, Google’s YouTube now offers a service that sells video ads tied to video search results and category pages on YouTube. More specifically, these video ads will come in the following formats:
1. YouTube Video Ads: Available in three formats in YouTube’s Flash Player and must be hosted and uploaded on YouTube. The three formats are:
a. Companion Display Ad: 300×35 companion banner will appear at the bottom or top of videos being played by a video watcher. This Video ad allows click-throughs to an advertiser’s external website. YouTube Insights can measure metrics of this video ad.
b. Click-to-Play Ad: 480×360 pixels video which is user initiated; YouTube’s version of a traditional commercial. Measurable via YouTube Insights.
c. Custom Titlecard Image: 300×225 pixels and is a static image either in GIF, JPG or PNG. Also accepted in Flash. Tracking is not available through YouTube Insights.
2. Standard Banner Ads: These banners run across all areas of the site and are available in two sizes. Third party tracking is available (Google Analytics?) as well as Ad impressions and click-through-rate.
3. Rich Media Ads: YouTube rich media ads run across limited areas of the site and are accepted in expandable and download formats.
4. YouTube Home Page Ads: Companion banners are the topmost component of the YouTube home page ads and are clickable to the advertisers external home page site. A YouTube hosted video is required before companion banners are able to be used by an advertiser.
5. YouTube InVideo Ads: These videos run on partner watch pages, and appear over the video 10 seconds after it starts playing for a user. The user can then click to display the video ad or go directly to the external advertisers website. Advertisers must use a YouTube provided template for creating these ads.
Quite similar to Google AdWords in many ways, YouTube sponsored videos use keyword targeting (video tagging) and cost-per-click bidding within the YouTube search results. And like Google AdWords, the amount you pay for advertising is completely up to you.
YouTube has also recruited a wide range of partner sites to server ads on; (Google Content Network?), YouTube will serve videos on content sites where “a direct relationship with content partners exist”. These partners fall into the following groups:
a. Comedy
b. TV shows
c. News/politics
d. Sports
e. Fashion and style
f. Music
g. How-to videos
Some of these partnership deals include CBS, BBC and Universal Music Group to name a few.
Why YouTube?
75% of Americans watched a video online last month. This allows a large opportunity for you to market your brand through a medium which is as close to a “hologram” as we have. As a marketer, you can speak directly to the audience you are targeting and build a “personal” relationship. Furthermore; YouTube is the 6th largest audience on the web – so video tape yourself and speak up!
For more information, visit https://ads.youtube.com
November 14, 2008
