Social Media and Marketing

Insights from YouTube, Trusted Places

Published: 10 Jun 2008

Insights from YouTube, Trusted Places

The burgeoning online video market offers a significant opportunity to test the non-interruptive monetisation models.

The medium has already witnessed the introduction of video-monetising platforms that allow advertisers to get their message to their target market without disrupting the user's video experience.

YouTube's Head of Media Solutions Jonathan Gillespie says, "Consumer self-selection will be increasingly important - marrying the old world virtues of TV's story-telling capabilities with the technological applications of the Internet will serve this consumer power well."

It is being predicted that the video advertising industry would grow to $2.9 billion by 2010.

"I feel the industry has moved on a lot, but we're still trying to work out whether ads should be placed pre-, mid- or post-roll. I feel that contextual, demographic and behavioural targeting can only improve user acceptance and effectiveness. If you look at the large range of start-ups like VideoEgg, Coull or ScanScout coming up with new and innovative solutions in this space, I believe we've only seen a glimpse of the online video advertising potential. The combination of local search and video advertising is something we're very interested in," Walid Al Saqquaf, Co-Founder & COO, Trusted Places told EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta.

Al Saqquaf feels providing the Internet users with the options to opt-in ads in their videos will make them more receptive.

"When YouTube launched video advertising there was a backlash by users unhappy with the introduction (of video advertising). It even resulted in services that were successful in providing those users with a service to block Youtube video advertising. However YouTube's response by providing content owners with the option to include video advertising essentially put part of the responsibility onto content owners. In the end if you look at the click through rates of video advertising, you will find that they're still more significant than the traditional form of online advertising. Advertisers just need to ensure that their ads are very relevant to the targeted demographic and the content of the video," he added.

For his part, Gillespie said, "Our experience so far is that in-video ads work for the user, and they work for the advertiser with enhanced click through levels."

On need to promote UGC, Gillespie said, "This is an interesting area. YouTube is unbelievably deep as a site. Every minute of the day 10 more hours of video are uploaded; hundreds of millions of videos are viewed every day. With this in mind, and with the destruction of distribution boundaries that is delivered by the Internet, it is naive for a brand to expect to be found. Clever marketers are realising this, working out path-finding strategies, which include blogging, seeding and paid for promotional space on YouTube. The travel market deals in dream realisation - why not visualise that by generating content and make it available for consumption."

Al Saqquaf agreed with Gillespie and said there is a lot of great content out on the web that idly sits with little views because of the lack of promotion.

"This is applicable to numerous industries as it is applicable to travel suppliers. From our experience at TrustedPlaces we have learned the following lessons:

- Having good content is a pre-requisite. It must be highly relevant to your target user base and it must be engaging.

- Content needs to travel. Adopting simple tools such as RSS, APIs, syndication, and other open formats gives Internet users the opportunity to export UGC content across the web, effectively promoting your content and brand.

- Reach out to the relevant sites. Identify relevant blogs, forums, and Internet groups on Facebook and MySpace."

Finally, on ROI in advertising campaigns in a social media environment, Gillespie said the company wants to look at the cost per engagement.

"With search we now have a very good understanding of the value of the click, but for YouTube and its position as a video destination for users, we should be thinking about the value of the brand, of the development of the propensity to purchase, as well as the click journey itself," he said.

(Forthcoming event on Social Media Strategies:

EyeforTravel is scheduled to conduct its inaugural Social Media Strategies in Travel Europe conference, as part of Sales & Marketing in Travel Europe 2008. The two-day conference will be held in Munich on 14 and 15 October.

For more information, click here http://events.eyefortravel.com/smeurope/ or contact Gina Baillie at +44 (0) 207 375 7197 or gina@eyefortravel.com).