It’s no secret that online advertising has flocked to YouTube. The opportunity for advertisers to tap into an already engaged audience of viewers is too good to pass up. But with so many advertisers vying for a spot in front of the crowd, does the ad clutter ruin the experience? You’d be surprised.
Online advertisers now have to be more careful with their strategy. If your ad creates a barrier between the viewer and their content, they won’t be happy and neither will the content owner if they leave. The solution? TrueView Video Ads. This flexible ad format allows YouTube channel owners to monetize their videos without blocking their viewers’ experience. TrueView ads are skippable after 5 seconds and provide a refreshing alternative to brand barriers for everybody.
Channels
The decision to monetize YouTube content can be a difficult one if you have a specific brand presence that you’d like to maintain. Brands don’t want ads to alter their image or drive away viewers. But with over 3 billion video views per week globally, ads are becoming an expected part of the experience. Just because everybody else is doing it, does that mean you should too? Not necessarily. But it is comforting to know that the stigma associated with advertising on your content is fading and becoming more normalized.
TrueView ads give channel owners the best opportunity to monetize content without deterring viewers. Because the ad can be skipped after 5 seconds, viewers are more likely to stay and watch. In fact 15-45% of viewers stick around to watch the whole ad. This helps keep your viewers happy and your brand image intact. If you’re going to monetize, why not give your audience some options?
Viewers
It’s up to advertisers to compete for your attention. Campaigns have to be carefully catered to what you want simply because the power is now in your hands. Advertisers need you to watch their whole ad before they get paid. If their TrueView ad sucks and you skip it, they loose out. This introduces an interesting new level of competition to the mix. Advertisers are trying harder than ever to make creative, engaging commercials that you might actually want to watch. This improves the quality of everything you’re “forced” to watch and could occasionally produce a pretty cool commercial. Also, YouTube knows when they showed you a TrueView pre-roll last so you won’t have to sit through it on repeated views.
Advertisers
TrueView ads might be one of the most insightful campaign options available to advertisers. The simple fact that you can tell if a viewer skipped or watch the entirety of the ad can give you valuable information about your strategy. If you get viewers to actually choose to stay and watch your commercial, you’re doing something right. Some advertisers have even used TrueView to test the effectiveness of ad campaigns before pushing to a wider television campaign. You only pay for views on the whole ad which makes ROI an easier stat to track. YouTube has also seen click-through rates of up to 4% (3-4 times higher than other video ad formats).
The fact that there is more adversing happening on YouTube doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative thing. Competition is now a much more important part of the equation. High demand for space among advertisers and the ability for viewers to outright skip them means they have to produce knock out content every time. Nobody’s thinking “man, I’m really glad that Swiffer commercial came on before this Phantogram video,” but at least the potential is there.
By now, you’ve experienced Part One and Part Two of our Marketing love affair. This week, we bring you the final installment with Hook, Line & Sync’ers, a map of our Film, TV, Advertising and Gaming partners.
We’ve partnered with the cream of the crop in all different industries and genres to get our clients’ music heard, and our Concentrated Music team is always hard at work securing more partnerships, like our latest one with Kina Grannis and Disney. Check out some of our past and current partners below:
Thanks to Airene Resurreccion for the graphic!
In an age of wanting to protect the user from intrusive advertising, we are failing.
Most websites strive to provide the user with an entirely unique experience. However, web sites with a lot of traffic are allowing certain companies to place particularly grating banners on their home pages that diminish the effect they are trying to create. These types of banners belong to companies, which create databases of personal details they later sell.
It’s interesting how well the hook of a car draw or a cheesy trip works.
Studies have shown that the average person cannot be bothered to fill in more than four fields of personal information on a regular website but when faced with the opportunity to win an new Audi, they will happily fill in twelve.
And where do your personal details go? To a massive database later to be sold for a huge profit because they contain details about you that cannot be found anywhere else.
These companies must be quite powerful if they have been able to convince as reputable platforms as Spotify to accept their ads. The presence of these banners also reflects Spotify’s growing popularity within Spain as they wouldn’t be interested in advertising there if the traffic wasn’t so high.
So the question is: where should we set the limit on this type of advertising?
In theory, the user is the one who always sets the limit. After all, that’s the premise of the Internet, right? The user is the one with full control over his online experience. However, we have seen this is not completely true.
In other forms of media, such as TV or radio, advertising is usually scheduled. That is to say, the user knows the time when there will be a segment of advertising. In fact, some TV channels report advertising breaks and their duration in advance. In this case the user at least has more of an option: watch the ads or channel surf.
Going back to the Internet, surfing to avoid advertisements is not an option and even less so for intrusive advertising. We can ignore them – the known effect of selective vision – but the unexpected ads are so intrusive that unless they add some real value for the consumer, they risk creating the opposite effect desired by advertisers. More often than not, they spur animosity towards the advertising company as well as the page the user is visiting.
My point is this: if you want your users to come back to your site and to subscribe and recommend your page, you must be very cautious in choosing which forms of advertising you allow. These intrusive ads might play a dirty trick on your business, in addition to infecting the Net.
Most marketing, promotion and advertising involves interruption. If an artist has a new release they want to tell people. But in order to do so they need to interrupt whatever people are doing so they can squeeze in their announcement. In our new attention economy communicating a message has a cost to the customer as well as the person delivering the message. Like the old adage “time is money.”
If only there was a way to deliver a message without interrupting people. One way would be to read their minds. For instance, if someone was thinking about something and then they were given information about what they were thinking about it wouldn’t be an interruption. It might actually be welcomed information.
So how do we read minds? Google. If someone is typing in a search term I know exactly what they are thinking. If they type the “Raveonettes” into Google I know they are thinking about the band The Raveonettes. And that is the best time to present my marketing message. It could be something as simple as “click here for a free Raveonettes track off the new album!”
If they click, you pay. But you also get a chance to collect a new customer. And what is a new customer worth? A lot more than the 10 cents or so it costs to acquire them.
Timing is everything. We used to want to deliver the same message at the same time to everyone. Not our problem if you were busy doing something else. Time to break in with our commercial message. Not anymore. Now we can read minds.
Thanks to Gogi Gupta for reminding me about the power of search and the Super Bowl for reminding me how I hate interruptions.
Image courtesy of Screenrant.com.
Christopher Covert
VP of Film, Television & Advertising
Joined the Orchard March 2007
So Covert, what the #&@$ do you do?
I guess I lead the team here and try and find creative opportunities for our labels – at least the ones that opt in – to place their music in TV shows, films, trailers, commercials, and other mixed-media things like video games and interactive video. Its a bit of a creative job presenting cool music, a bit sales, and a lot of begging.
How long have you been working in the music/begging industry?
About 17 years. Its more a combo of music, film, and TV industry since ’94 when I started working at MTV. Started there in production and dealt with live music events and was a floor producer for 120 Minutes way back. Music Supervisor on films for a long time after that.
I didn’t realize MTV once aired music videos. Interesting.
What are some notable sync placements that come to mind?
I think the new Heineken spot is very cool. And a Korean club/house cover version of “Move Bitch” by Ludacris we were able to place in Hancock a couple years ago–was a pretty funny use. But there are lots of great things the Team has done…
What made you move back to NY? You wanted to be closer to ol’ Schustack?
I actually just wanted his office. There was too much light in California. That, and I wanted to be closer to family now that I have a baby girl.
So, Schustack’s office first…family second. Are you not worried about losing your golden L.A. tan?
No, not at all. I just had a 42,000w surround-tan system installed in my office. If there is a City-wide blackout, I was never here…
Last live show you attended?
Honestly, my bedtime is like 8:30pm now. I saw Ivan & Alyosha do an in-house showcase at Gray Advertising we set up. And my daughter bangs the shit out of tables and screams. So I guess the answer is pretty un-hip…
That was hip enough. Favorite office coffee flavor?
That is rather obvious. The Covert Double Double – two nestretto, two hazelnut coffee – all happy jitters for days…**
Favorite item in The Orchard vending machine?
There’s a vending machine?
Well thanks, Covert! I always wondered what the #&@$ you did, and yes… we have vending machines.
**Please consult your physician before experimenting with “The Covert Double Double”
