Sunday, November 30, 2014

Vimeo versus YouTube for Content Marketing

It should come as no surprise that in 2013 more than half of Americans watched a combined 52 billion online videos, and that YouTube owned more viewing hours than all other platforms together. YouTube is massive, garnering around 1 billion unique visitors a month – this, compared to 70 million unique visitors per month for Vimeo. While YouTube might be bigger than Vimeo, it might not be better for marketers looking to build and distribute video content for their business. There is an estimate that 100 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube each minute. With so much content out there, it becomes extremely hard to stand out and be found amongst the masses. Also, quantity does not equal quality.

Vimeo has explicit and implicit policies that help to control both the number and quality of videos placed on its platform. For instance, while there is no limit to the length of individual videos, each account has a total allotment of video space. For more storage space, account holders have to pay, therefore only the dedicated (and often talented, purposeful) content publishers have the most video time. Those who do pay for higher tiered accounts receive benefits and services, as Vimeo wants to make sure they stay.


For marketers, there is a question of pure reach vs. professional reach, and it can be argued that Vimeo is better for the latter. Premium subscribers can customize elements of their video player, allowing a business to put a logo on the player and a custom outro. Perhaps most importantly, there is no advertisements on Vimeo. No threat of having a user exit out of the window prematurely from ad annoyance, and no worries about having an untasteful ad associated with your company. Vimeo enables businesses and their marketing content to take center stage, aligning Vimeo’s interests with their paying customers – a benefit that YouTube will fundamentally not offer any time in the near future. 

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