YOUTUBE – AD PROPOSITION UPDATE
From an advertising point of view it has always surprised me how relatively long (it is only 3 years since YouTube launched in Australia) for the YT ad product to evolve. Of course this evolution is very much in keeping with the Google philosophy of user experience first; ads, monetisation and revenue second.
So, it was great to see yesterday a raft of new ad positions; many of which are engaging prominent homepage placements and video overlays (which are served only over professional content) and which were all clearly developed with a users experience in mind. In addition there are a load of new and quite sexy channel features now available for advertisers including video carousel galleries, video walls and for the adventurous an ability to create custom gadgets.
YouTube’s audience is also estimated at 5.3M users or 40% of Australian video views, and ~50% are logged in meaning we have a sense of their demographics and locations – Wrap all that up and you find you have a pretty compelling media proposition.
Some other interesting stats I noted down:
- It is estimated that +90% of the video content on YT is user created, although with revenue sharing partnerships there is more and more professional content coming online all the time. The IPL will be streamed live this year – in a first for YT globally
- In Australia there are 5 Billion streams accessed each month – and 1 Billion a day globally
The other interesting thing discovered yesterday was the Test Tube section of the site – which is essentially the Google labs of YouTube – in here you will find all manner of features that are in beta. One test that caught my eye in particular and one I can see being very useful if you are looking to gather verbatims and sentiment for a topic or theme is the comment search tool which allows you to search YouTube for comments based on a key word. Here is a query for Avatar Movie
So, YouTube is more than just videos of Goats Yelling like a man On a good day it reaches an audience large enough to rival leading Australian portal homepages, and you also get the benefit of analytics that tells you who watched liked and commented on your content – who else can claim that?
A special thanks to Aleetza Wood of YouTube for an excellent refresher session on YT ad products yesterday.
Happy Tubing
