Preeti Malhotra, Head of the Department, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, JIMS Vasant Kunj II examines the content strategy that works for YouTube advertising.
Post pandemic rebound has left YouTube richer. In the second quarter of 2021, the revenue for YouTube surged by 84% generating $7b. In the third quarter of 2021, the platform’s revenue soared by another 43% (annually) and generated the record ad revenue of $7.205b. The number of YouTube users worldwide stand at 1.86billion, up from 1.35 billion users in 2016. The world’s second largest search engine, YouTube is also the second largest social media platform after Facebook. YouTube’s user base in India is estimated to hit 833.3mn mark by 2025, up from 459.23mn in 2021. As for the number of people reached through social media advertising, Statista indicates that in January 2021, 448mn users were reached through YouTube advertising in India as compared to Facebook where the number of users reached through advertising stood at 320mn. This makes YouTube the most portent interface to garner consumers’ attention and in turn explains the soaring advertising revenues of the platform. It is estimated that 100hours of new videos are being uploaded on YouTube every minute and majority of the content is coming from 18–34 years age segment.
What kind of advertising or promotional strategies work on YouTube? To what extent advertising on YouTube impacts purchasing intent of the customers and eventually cause sales of a brand to boom?
Types of YouTube Ads
YouTube advertising videos can be categorized into two segments- in-stream video advertising and in-video advertising. In-stream video ads give a choice to the viewers to either watch the ad or skip it after 5 seconds. The duration of instream video ads ranges from 5 to 15 seconds. Research has it that that as many as 73% viewers skip instream ads. Aligning video ads with the content they are beamed with is significant to contain the damage caused by such behaviour of the viewers.
In video ads on the other hand usually run at the bottom of a company’s video and give the option to the viewer to minimize or close the ad.
Attributes of YouTube Ads
Research identifies three positive advertising attributes – customization, entertainment and informativeness as the key drivers of responsiveness to YouTube ads. Brand awareness generated by the YouTube ads in turn lead to the positive purchasing intent of the consumers. On the flip side, irritation (often associated with pop ups and banner ads) is negatively associated with YouTube advertising as the viewers perceive such inserts as goal interruption.
YouTube is an experiential platform where hedonics have a role to play. The attribute of the entertainment that triggers connect with the viewers at large include enjoyment enhancement, emotional release and diversion. Product placement to improve brand visibility through surrogate advertising or embedding brand related props in the entertainment programs blur the lines between marketing and other content. Lifestyle oriented, personalized ads calibrated to the viewers’ social media profiling yield better purchasing intent than the ads lacking customization. In the smart advertising environment of digital spaces, customization aligned to the interest and preferences of the viewers is cognitively linked to credibility.
Advertisers designing ad strategy for YouTube also leverage its partner program where the web video producers produce original content for the site and benefit from the ad revenue of the platform.
Brands Over Products
Research studies on recall indicate that brands command better retention compared to product-based ads. Business entities seeking returns from YouTube advertising must invest at least first few seconds of the commercial to entertainment. Also, the production teams must appreciate that for a YouTube ad to cause the desired outcome, video marketing is as critical as video production.
The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, JIMS Vasant Kunj II with its unique learning modules and industry aligned curriculum offers undergraduate degree programme in journalism, mass communication and media management leading to top placements and careers in TV anchoring, radio jockeying, online journalism, advertising, multimedia journalism, public relations, event management, television production, sound production, social media marketing among others.
