Four months ago YouTube launched a marketing blitz to make audiences and advertisers more aware of its homegrown talent. So how has the campaign worked so far?
It depends on how you're measuring. The campaign's first phase --which debuted in April and promoted YouTube creators Michelle Phan, Bethany Mota and Rosanna Pansino -- increased people's awareness of the trio fourfold, a YouTube spokeswoman said.
The brand awareness lift was measured based on an online panel of 18-to-34-year-olds surveyed by researcher Ipsos.
Awareness is fine, but audience is a more important measure from a business perspective. Advertisers and their wallets tend to follow people's eyeballs. And considering that YouTube timed the campaign's first two phases to major advertising events (the Digital NewFronts and Cannes Lions festival), advertisers appear to be as much the target audience as viewers.
"If these channels don't get mainstream viewership, then they'll never be as attractive to us as Google would like them to be. It's always smart when people try to build up their audience," said Catherine Davis, president of Vizeum Americas.
The three channels saw somewhat gradual accelerations in views after the campaign's initial roll-out.
The campaign's second phase may offer a clearer look at any correlation between the campaign and channels' popularity. That phase promoted Maker Studios' "Epic Rap Battles of History" and Vice News and rolled out in a staggered fashion. TV spots for "Epic Rap Battles" premiered on June 12 during the World Cup's first match, and Vice News ads followed, starting on June 30.
These numbers -- again provided by Tubular Labs -- show how the campaign has coincided with more people checking out the channels' videos and whether they have opted to do so on an ongoing basis as subscribers.
YouTube's broadly targeted campaign didn't hit the mark with every advertiser.
OMD Chief Digital Officer Ben Winkler said that YouTube's NewFronts sales strategy had more of an impact among savvy clients than the campaign.
This year YouTube pitched buyers on a program called Google Preferred that bundled the top 5% of YouTube channels in certain categories like news and gaming.
"Our clients always knew there was tons of great content on YouTube…. There were probably advertisers and consumers who weren't familiar with the quality content on Google and for them the campaign was useful," Mr. Winkler said.
More details:
http://adage.com/article/digital/results-youtube-s-ads-vice-news-maker-studios/294421/
No comments:
Post a Comment