The proliferation of online video content, combined with improvements in mobile technology and user demand has created a huge opportunity for video marketing. Since human beings are so visual and are used to receiving information from TV, movies, etc. it only makes sense that marketing via and alongside online video content is the next new frontier. And, let’s face it, wouldn’t you rather watch a video on about an exciting new product vs. reading a user manual?
Organic Search and Video Marketing
As with any online marketing, there are best practices to ensure that your online video content is getting the most relevant eyeballs. While video is a fantastic vehicle to encourage user engagement, it’s important to keep in mind that search engines can’t crawl the actual content of a web video. Certain optimizations must be made to have an effective video content strategy and drive organic searchers to videos. These organic search optimizations include proper tagging – both on YouTube and on your website, as well as dedicated landing pages for each video.
Also, video is an excellent way to build and protect branded search terms in results. Brands who take advantage of actively uploading video content to YouTube tend to have their YouTube channels and videos surface higher in search results.
Stay tuned to this blog for real, tactical advice on optimizing YouTube channels.
Paid Search and Video Marketing
There are several types of ways to use video in the paid online advertising arena. You can promote your company by sending paid traffic to the video itself, or you may choose to display ads alongside other videos. YouTube/AdWords for videos has a rich advertising platform that has gotten easier to use and track in the past year. Advertising options here include displaying your own video before someone else’s, adding an overlay ad to the bottom of a related videos, and paid search results.
Optimizing AdWords for video has a lot of overlap with optimization of “standard” AdWords campaigns, though there are a number of unique metrics here as well.
From AdWords for video: With AdWords for video, you pay only when people interested in your business choose to view your ads. Target your customers by topic, by keywords, or by demographics like ‘women under 35.’
Let’s check out some online video view statistics….
For the month of December 2013 alone, 52.4 billion online videos had been watched by 188.2 million Americans. This is a 35% increase over the totals for December 2012. The top sites contributing to these views in December are: Google, Facebook, AOL, Yahoo, and NDN.
Video advertising is keeping pace with this tremendous increase. In the month of December 2013 alone, there were a total of 35.2 billion video ads viewed. This is about a 68% increase year over year!
What do you think this will look like a year from now? What about 5 years? Facebook is already estimating that they will generate $1.1 billion in video advertising revenue for 2015. This shows the high potential online video content has to generate interest and revenue. Maybe it’s time to jump on aboard?