YouTube Advertising

YouTube Advertising

            YouTube has made nothing short of a pretty penny from advertising. With over four thousand legitimate brands spending over five hundred million dollars on sponsored videos, YouTube advertisements have proven to be an effective way to reach audiences. YouTube rightfully has a good reputation and has proven legitimate by being the second largest search engine and the second most visited website behind Google.

            A large reason why YouTube’s advertising is so highly effective is because of the specifications you can set on them. For example, brands can decide to display their ads to specific demographics, interests and search terms. So if you see an advertisement for fashion or clothing, it’s probably because you have previously watched a good amount of fashion or clothing videos on YouTube. The powerhouse of a website also provides a detailed analysis of the performance of the advertisements for brands or companies. Some of the statistics provided from YouTube to the brands are reach, engagement and conversation rates. YouTube providing these stats give them an edge over other websites for ad revenue, while also allowing the brands that do pay for ads to adjust and optimize their strategies accordingly.

            One thing I find very interesting is the variety of options when creating an ad to put on YouTube. The website offers a handful of ad options like skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, in-feed video ads, video action campaigns and even more. Skippable in-stream ads are ads that are at the beginning, middle or end of a YouTube video and have to option to be skipped after 5 seconds. Non-skippable in-stream ads are fifteen seconds or shorter and play at the same times, but with no option to skip. In-feed video ads are used to promote video content in places of discovery, like next to a YouTube video that the ad synergizes or relates to well. Video action campaigns are skippable ads that attempt to reach as many people as possible and run at the beginning, middle or end of a video. All in all, YouTube has proven that their form of advertising is unmatched, from quality, options and results.