Internet Marketing Blog

YouTube Has 10 Seconds to Sell Your Product! 10…, 9…, 8…,7…

October 5, 2007 – 8:26 am

Since Google made the infamous purchase of YouTube, the wildly popular video sharing site, we have all speculated, along with investors, how Google planned to make back its reported $1.65 billion. It appears as if Flash, the popular animation software, is the answer to this mystery. Late this summer, Google announced that short, 10 second flash animation sequences would appear as overlay at the bottom of carefully selected YouTube videos.

YouTube - “Chocolate Rain” Original Song by Tay Zonday

As a consumer, you can actively turn off the flash animation, ignore it for 10 seconds until it disappears, or click on the sequence and see the full ad. Each of these elements has been present in a variety of advertising techniques, from website openers to banner ads, in the past. But, the combination of them, integrated into the wildly popular viral nature of YouTube, is totally unique and possessive of two attributes necessary for successful advertising.

Popularity: The biggest advantage Google has seen with this specific ad strategy is that it tremendously popular, 10 times more likely to get clicks than traditional video banner ads. Not only that, but once ads are clicked, 75% of viewers watched the entire ad. This says a lot about how well the ads are targeting viewers and how likely the ads are to get people interested.

Non-intrusivity: The standard for video advertising in the past was pre-roll advertising, which tended to either drive viewers away from the video completely or drive them to the skip button instantaneously. With the flash ad overlays, which cover only the bottom 20% of the screen and are translucent, fewer than 10% of viewers actively closed the overlay. That means over 90% of viewers were either completely unbothered by the ad, or intrigued enough to click on it.YouTube Ads Garner More Clicks Than Banner Ads

For now, Google plans on showing these ads only on the professional videos of commercial companies, like Fox and Warner Music Group, and on a few carefully selected user generated clips. Business will pay for impressions, rather than click-throughs, until better data about the cost-effectiveness of this new form of advertising can be amassed. For unpopular videos, the charge will hardly break the bank at a mere $20 per thousand views, but run away hits like the “Chocolate Rain” music video, with nearly 10 million hits, could quickly become expensive.

The important issue here is for marketing agencies and large companies to design entertaining flash sequences that get the viewer to click.

Three key points:

Know Your Audience: The ad placement can be targeted to video genre, demographics, geography, and time of day. There are no excuses here for creating flash visuals with no direction. Consider who this video will target, the audience’s likes and dislikes, secret fears, and sense of humor. This information is available. Do your research!

Catch Your Audience: These ads work really well because they are so un-obtrusive that people don’t feel the need to close them. That’s great because people are unlikely to cut off your ad in less than 10 seconds. That’s also dangerous because these ads are so unobtrusive that people might not even notice them. Make sure to include active animations, interesting colors, and strong visuals that don’t give it all away. Use the most amusing part of your ad for the 10 seconds, and use studies in order to determine where that point is

Sell Your Audience: Once your viewer has clicked on the ad, there is a 75% chance they will finish it. Up that probability with a video that is engaging. A recent TiVo study found that simply offering customers the right product at the right time is more important that smart design or subtle technique. Calls to action are still important and remember: you haven’t made any money at all until someone actually buys something.