YouTube is the premier destination in watching and sharing online videos. Increasingly companies have been jumping on the bandwagon and using YouTube in order to reach their target markets, as well as develop interactive relationships with their audience. It appears as though everyone has migrated online.

The core reasons for YouTube’s success lay in unique areas that cannot be covered by traditional marketing methods. YouTube is more effective for both the consumer and advertiser because of an instant lead to a product/service through a website, an interaction with the audience (unlike TV + print), cheaper cost,  and it’s unrestricted availability 24/7 at the consumer’s convenience. What other method of advertising can you say that about?

Success stories:

“ Family Guy”
Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” and Media Rights Capital knew they needed to be creative and break through the online cluster so they created a web-only collection of episodes called ‘ Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’. Instead of simply building a website and hoping people stumble upon it, they pushed the content to the public by creating YouTube channels that were distributed through out YouTube and Google’s Content Network.
End result? In just a short time, ‘ Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’ became one of the most popular phenomena on the web.

Lionsgate
In promotion of “ Forbidden Kingdom”  Lionsgate  did not simply want to be airing trailers on TV. They also made sure to take their Internet presence beyond simply the film’s website. The Google ad network extended the reach everywhere from search ads to buzz targeting. It gave a reason for the audience to “come back” to view the brand. And come back they did, 3 million times.

YouTube and reaching your audience

So who’s using YouTube?

-88% of “ Online Canadians” viewed an online video in the month of January, 2009.
-50% of those videos were watched on YouTube.
-16.4 million individuals visit YouTube on a monthly basis and hundreds of thousands videos are uploaded to the site daily.
-26% are 45 and older; 16% are between 35-44; 34% are between 18-34; and 23% are <18.

It’s a fact – everyone is online and on YouTube.
It’s also interesting to note that the age group which tends to spend the most money and is the “ dream age” for many advertisers is also the age group that spends the most time on YouTube. Coincidence? Maybe. But it’s definitely a good one.

How the #1 entertainment site on the web is able to benefit you

-YouTube is able to reach a particular demographic, launching products in select markets and running different creatives in different geographic regions.

-The content always aligns with campaigns and your ad runs next to select partner content – with over 3000 partners to choose from.

-You are able to reach people who are actually interested.
People search videos related to similar keywords as selected by you.  Since there is over 15hours of content uploaded every minute, your video surfaces to relevant searches.

-You only pay if your users click to view your video.
That’s almost like only paying if there’s a guarantee someone is actually watching your advertisement each time it airs on TV.

-Now you can develop a relationship with the consumer.
There a variety of ways to engage the consumer at your YouTube channel by customizing the channel, and branding your page. In addition, your brand channel can also live and be integrated on to any website on top of YouTube.

Google & YouTube as the ultimate distribution model

Together these two digital media leaders are the largest distribution platform on the web, reaching over 75% of all Internet users in a targeted and controlled environment.

And if that wasn’t enough….

Your market research is done for you

YouTube provides you with information such as who is your audience, where are they from, what do they watch and when, how people discovered your video, and demographics of those watching. You are also able to find out how often your video is viewed, when are people watching it, and which spot of your video is getting the most attention from your target market. This provides information that helps in analyzing your marketing efforts  both on and off YouTube.  People host  expensive focus groups to find out information similar to this.

Evidently, YouTube is effective. It allows one to reach and interact with the audience more so than other marketing and advertising tools. With less of a focus on aggressive selling and more on customer relationships,  you’ve got nothing to lose – marketing with YouTube is a win-win situation.

Source: YouTube Canada Report 2009