As someone that drives from Grand Rapids to Muskegon every day, my primary form of media consumption is YouTube. Not to physically watch videos (because that’s dangerous while driving), but to listen to the videos’ audio from my different subscribed content creators. With every video I’m hit with an advertisement. Some are long, some are short, but the catchy ones, like Amazon’s AR advertisements, are fed to me every single day. And, they are non-skippable, so I have to listen to the ads in order to get to my content.
Working in video production, it’s my job to let you know the trends in the industry so you can get the most out of your money in regards to advertising. The question that you should be asking yourself right now: is my target audience using YouTube and should I be running my advertisements on YouTube? Well, to help answer, let’s first look at some statistics about YouTube.
- YouTube has 2 billion logged-in monthly users. Yeah, that’s billion with a “B.”
- 73% of adults in the United States use YouTube as a social media platform. That’s more than Facebook’s 69% and almost twice as much as Instagram’s 37%.
- YouTube is the second most-preferred platform for watching video on TV screens among 18 to 34 year olds, after Netflix. This means that YouTube is beating traditional TV – both in basic cable and broadcast networks.
- 81% of 15 to 25 year olds in the United States use YouTube.
- Each visitor spends on average 11 minutes and 24 seconds per day on YouTube.
- Over 70% of YouTube views are on mobile devices.
Source: Hootsuite
YouTube is a big platform and, in theory, it’s better than traditional media; but, what does it mean for me and what does your content have to look like if you want to place ads on YouTube? There are a couple different advertising opportunities:
- Video discovery ads that appear after YouTube searches
- Display ads that appear as a related video on the right-hand sidebar of a video
- Pre-roll ads that appear before the video a viewer wants to watch
Pre-roll ads are video advertisements that can automatically play directly before, mid-way, or after the main video, on mobile and desktop. These ads are commonly 15, 30, or 60 seconds long. Some are non-skippable (meaning the user has to watch the entire advertisement) while others are skippable after 5 seconds, which is why they must grab the attention of their audience within the first 6 seconds. The beauty of pre-roll is that running an ad before the user’s desired content or in the middle of a video means the audience is likely engaged, interested, and willing to sit through a brief ad to get to the content that they want to see. Because some pre-roll ads can’t be skipped, these video are optimized to have strong call-to-actions in the beginning. The audience is able to click on your ad and receive something in return, such as a landing page for your product or business. Keep in mind, though, YouTube sells pre-roll advertisements on a pay-per-click basis.
You can also run bumpers. At 6 seconds in length, they are the shortest YouTube ads available. However, one running by itself doesn’t have a massive impact. The strategy with bumpers is to have multiple 6-second ads that play sequentially in front or in the middle of multiple videos that a user watches to tell a larger story of a video campaign of a product or business. These have been proven to be very successful as their length keeps the audience engaged and they have they potential to be just as effective as regular ads in generating brand awareness.
Bumper ad examples:
The goal of RCP Marketing is to make your campaign successful whether you decide to place advertisements on YouTube or not. Our staff will always strive to make the best content for you in this growing digital age where video content is now a must have in any strategy. I hope this article helped in understanding YouTube more because knowing about your options is half the battle. It’s going to be exciting in the next couple of years to see where the trends go and to see if YouTube continues to grow as top advertising platform.
