YouTube Ad Options For Searches And Clicks At Five

by Laurie Sullivan, May 17, 2010, 10:47 PM

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There are 24 hours worth of videos uploaded each minute onto YouTube and 45 million home page impressions every day. The site gets more than 2 billion views daily and monetizes a billion videos per week that managed to triple partner ad revenue in 2009.

YouTube turned five years old Monday, and it has experienced tremendous growth. Still, some analysts want to know when profits will start rolling in. That could be soon. Aside from the numerous ways to monetize videos, the site is considering offering a self-service movie rentals model for invited partners.

Expect the use of ads in videos to skyrocket, according to Chase Norlin, chief executive officer at AlphaBird, an online video syndication company. "You not only have intent expressed from the search for content in the video, but then you have the intent when the person clicks on the sponsored videos," he says.

Video advertising will post the highest growth rate in 2010, rising 48.1% to $1.5 billion, according to eMarketer.

YouTube runs ads against more than one billion video views weekly worldwide. The site boasts more monetized views than any other video site has total views. And based on the different ways that people interact with YouTube, ad formats match those experiences.

The site offers a variety of ad formats. Promoted Videos is the search advertising product that helps drive views of videos. Think AdWords for YouTube, but there the site offers display ads, too.

Google continues to work closely with YouTube to monetize display ads that ensure advertisers can reach their audience across the Web. This means giving advertisers even more control over how and where ads appear, building self-service tools that let them scale campaigns that span across YouTube and the Google Content Network.

The mission to monetize ads began in August 2006 with the launch of both Participatory Video Ads (PVA), and Brand Channels, YouTube's first advertising concepts. Then in September 2006, Cingular became the first major advertiser, rocking the site with an underground music contest.

InVideo Ads, also known as overlays, followed in August 2007, along with the YouTube Partner Program in December that same year. Since then, YouTube launched analytics tool YouTube Insights, ecommerce platform Click-to-Buy, Promoted Videos, and Pre-Roll ads. YouTube didn't stop when it expanded home page ads options from one to seven formats. It soon added Individual Video Partnerships, began testing the Skippable pre-rolls test, launched Video Targeting, and began running YouTube mobile ads.

Videos make a images worth a thousand words. "Apart from the fact, visually, that humans process images far quicker than words, YouTube gave Google a lesson in the importance of visual search early on from the way users interact and search for information within the interface," says Manny Rivas, online marketing manager at aimClear, a search agency. "We've observed several changes to YouTube as well as the big 'watch page' reconstruction," he says. "These alterations were all in response to the way users search, discover, and interact with the platform."

Search within the site isn't the same as search in Google. With an added image thumbnail and view count, the title tag and description are, for some, only additional queues to the user, Rivas says.

Media Experts relies on YouTube to support several clients' need for marketing with videos. Home page takeovers, mastheads, sponsorships, promoted videos, video overlays or Google content targeting are numerous ways the agency gains successful results on YouTube. Media Experts search marketing director Nectarios Economakis says the agency experiments with contests requiring user-generated content. "We were also part of the Canadian launch of YouTube with a national takeover," he says.

YouTube has become the number two search engine in the world, and the statistic doesn't get lost with search marketers. Visual and video search have gained importance to optimize. Consumers adjusted to searching for videos and images directly in the search engine results pages (SERP), and have come to expect it. Economakis says Google understands that search is not limited to Web pages. Through YouTube, Google proved video is a key form of content. And with video comes image search, he says.

Along with Media Experts, SMG Search supports clients that want to advertise on YouTube. SMG Search clients have sponsored the homepage, as well as bought sponsored search ads and overlays. People want a sight, sound and motion experience in search results, says Jennifer Simkins, vice president, director, SMG Search, Detroit. "They can answer questions with a demonstration or how-to video, and we see this in the level of sophistication in search queries on YouTube," she says.

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