YouTube is the leading online video destination. It’s also the leading video search engine (and by some measures the second largest search engine overall). But with more than 20 hours of video being uploaded each minute, it’s increasingly difficult to get noticed by YouTube viewers without going beyond video SEO and using innovative approaches that—at least for now—are little used and underappreciated. Tune in to this session to find out how.
Moderator: Andy Atkins-Kruger (AA), Managing Director, WebCertain
Q&A Moderator: Christine Churchill (CC), President, KeyRelevance.com
Speakers:
- Dara Nasr (DN), Senior Industry Manager, Google & YouTube
- Ciaran Norris (CN), Head of Social Media, Mindshare
- Avi Wilensky (AW), ceo/founder, Promediacorp
(The below are Tim’s notes from the “Advanced Tactics For Promoting YouTube Videos” session at SMX Advanced. They have been posted during the session and will be tidied up later – more SMX coverage here)
Dara Nasr
This presentation was a pure advert for YouTube advertising. And I paid to listen 🙁
Been with YouTube 3 yrs (previously TV advertising)
- Video accounts for 1/3 of all web traffic (bandwidth) 90% by 2013 (Cisco)
- BBC claim 50% of its content will be watched online by 2013
- 2 billion videos watched per day
- Smart phones increasing growth
- 24hrs of video uploaded every minute to YouTube. In UK 20% is now premium partner content (what advertising can be served against) as opposed to UGC
- YouTube accounts for approx 4% of time spent online
- Video is 50 times more likely to appear in natural search
- Google searches vs YouTube searches. YouTube likely to be more entertainment orientated. More about brand focus than reviews.
- YouTube search volume tool – compare and contrast with AdWords tool.
- Promoted Video Ads – CPC keyword targeted. Often use for “branded response” adverts e.g. O2 selling music tickets. Can saturate all buzz phrases if want – 15p per click average currently
- Can target by demographics
- Sharing with friends becoming more important. 10% of all YouTube video views are embedded on social sites e.g. Facebook
- Question: Ranking? YouTube algorithm is simpler, more based on popularity and tagging.
Avi Wilensky
(Works agency side for Sony Music)
Differences between channels
- User Channel – free
- Brand Sponsor Channel – requires 6 figure media commitment
- Partner Channel – rev share for selected users (adsense for video model)
YouTube Partnership Program
- Only open to established, good quality YouTubers. Have to apply. Higher standards than adsense. Gives quite a number of advantages including being able to claim and monetize their content via “Content ID” – allows Sony to add “Click to Buy” when song included in UGC
- Not just for big brands. Fred Figglehorn makes 100k per month, shot on flip camera improv series about a 6 yr old dysfunctional kid.
- Streaming Rentals (in Beta in US) – ad free monetise by rental similar to iTunes or Netflix. Potentially work well for niche topics.
Viral Videos
- Killer linkbait
- Example Shakira World Cup – getting people to upload themselves doing dance
- Blog post idea: Build top 10 lists from great YouTube content e.g. Mashable top 10 wedding dance videos on YouTube
- YouTube insight – Analytics for YouTube
- YouTube Captions – allows sub titles to be added to videos – accessibility
- YouTube Feather – cut down bandwidth use
- Creators corner – portal with tips and tricks. Includes AudioSwap for getting music you can use.
Video Site Maps – No downside to pushing content rather than relying on a crawl. XML feed managed through Webmaster Tools
Microformats – RDFa: meta type data for videos
Can upload directly from mobile by emailing youraccountcode@m.youtube.com
Ciaran Norris
How to get a video to go viral.
- What is viral marketing? “Shit that people like to share”
- Why? Lot of products simply not interesting enough in own right, viral offers opportunity for e.g. toblerone, milano cookies
- Can’t make a viral. All you can do is make great content and push it as hard as you can. Don’t neglect paid ways of promoting.
- First things first?
- Is your audience likely to upload videos to YouTube?
- Email still best tool for spreading viral
- YouTube itself is great example of a viral – made sharing easy. Ditto Hotmail – signature – make your product viral. virals don’t have to be video
- Virals that do well are: funny (e.g. will it blend), unbelievable (e.g. sunglasses catch), pose a question (e.g. look out for cyclist advert – missed moonwalking bear – made people think again), informative (good for B2B – if it has real insight) or piggyback or spoofs fo cult phenomena (e.g. wonderbra spoof of cadburys gorilla “talent imitats, genius steals”)
- Tip: Ask your community what to do next
- Tip: subtle embed of slogan e.g. “Never Hide” in dirt on car window – if you searched Google got taken to raybans site
- B2B – a few views could be viral
- Tips
- Headline: Make them “Exclusive”
- Thumbnail: plan your video to get middle of vid interesting
- Comments – let them roll
- Referrers – if people embed your vid, think how you can drive traffic to them
- Conclusion: Its the creative stupid.
Q&A
- Are there plans to change to CPC model? DN: Can purchase some space by CPC. However advertisers are used to CPM so now immediate desire to change.
- Copyright infringement. How often are search index updated? DN: Biggest probs are in music industry. YouTube recognises copyright music and alert record label who can choose how to deal with it. Do not serve adverts against UGC as impossible to police.
- Will audioswap be extended to allow UGC to be added? DN: Possibly
- Are there tools that show when best times to upload videos, what words to use etc? CN: No. DN: No CN: Mixture of art and science
- Algorithm? DN: Lot of work going on currently with voice to text type technologies for ranking that has proved very favourable [suggestion that not included yet but being worked on]. Image recognition technology likely to be a way off yet due to difficulties of moving image and variable quality. Work being done with premium partners first.
