No one really enjoys going on a video platform such as YouTube and being bombarded with ads. Nothing screams, ‘look we’re making money off your boredom!’ like an ad that’s featured bang in the middle or at the start of your video. I mean honestly, some of us just want to watch James Corden prancing in the middle of the street dressed as Belle with zero interruptions. So why do platforms like YouTube continue to remain popular despite featuring so many ads? Let’s explore.
Well, one reason could be that people prefer watching ads over paying for a subscription. Let’s deliberate over this for a minute. If you had the option of watching your favorite sitcom on YouTube with a few ads thrown in between, would you prefer that over paying a monthly subscription to watch the same show? There’s a good chance that you would, right? Sure, we can assume that a lot of people would agree with you since reliable stats have shown that revenue from platforms like YouTube will likely grow by well over 100% every year.
This is far, far more than the growth that’s expected to favor paid video streaming services. Bearing in mind the fact that paid streaming services are considered to be expensive (particularly in developing countries), you can see why these stats only corroborate what’s logical here. The biggest video streaming services in the world such as YouTube, Amazon, Disney+, etc. take up the lion’s share of revenue in the sector, and for good reason.
The percentage of viewers that spend time on YouTube is expected to grow steadily each year. While this growth is estimated to be around 2-3% every year for the next 3 years, it will most likely slow down as we’re halfway through the decade. So what does this mean for advertisers? Take advantage of YouTube placements now, of course!
YouTube viewership seems to have jumped by nearly (a whopping) 20% from the year 2019 to the year 2020. One reason behind this could be the pandemic that forced everyone indoors and left them with no choice but to spend all day on their phones. Seems morbid to think that a pandemic benefitted an entertainment platform to such an extent, but there it is. As more and more people flocked to YouTube and other platforms in an attempt to stay entertained over the past 2 years, companies that featured ads on them enjoyed increased engagement.
Increased positive engagement led to a corresponding increase in revenue for such companies, which is why they continue to feature their ads on this site. Even though the extent to which ads can support video platforms is limited, it’s useful all the same. But wait, what do we mean by limited here? Well, it’s the fact that companies haven’t figured out a way as yet through which they allow users to download videos for free if the latter agree to watch ads as payment. Hulu claimed that it could do that a couple of years ago, only to backtrack and offer downloads to paid subscribers when the feature finally came out.
The truth of the matter is that it’s not practical for platforms like YouTube to offer ad views in exchange for downloads. Sure, YouTube does have a download option now for offline viewing but content creators have the option to turn it off. Can you imagine why such creators would want to do that? We can, because ad tracking becomes very difficult for offline videos which leaves plenty of room for ad tech fraud to take place. There’s no means by which advertisers can check how their ads fared in terms of engagement, etc. when viewers download and watch them.
So, setting aside the issue with downloads, let’s get back to ads that are featured on YouTube when you’re online. YouTube offers various options to feature your ads in such a way that maximizes viewership and consequentially, engagement. You can choose the duration of your ads, the point at which they’ll feature in a video (beginning, middle, or end), and whether they’ll be skippable or unskippable.
With this wide array of features at their disposal, it’s easy to see why Display Ad makers prefer this site over many others that attract similar traffic. Besides, I could fill several pages with why YouTube is quite possibly the best platform to feature video ads on. To condense it for you, the main reason why video ads on YouTube fare so well is that people are on the platform to view videos anyway, so they’re more amenable to watching video ads.
To put things in perspective, would you rather watch a video ad before the video you’d like to watch on YouTube or before an article that you’d like to read on Business Insider? Exactly, you get it. If the stats that we’ve spoken about above are to be believed (when are they not?), then perhaps it would be a good idea to step on the pedal and feature your video ads on YouTube. Make hay while the sun shines, so to speak. There’s no harm in waiting a few years to place your ads on the mighty ‘Tube, but you can’t hope to see the kind of growth in viewership that it’s experiencing now. Not for the foreseeable future at least.
If you have the budget for it and have the right kind of marketing experts on hand to successfully execute a Display Ad Campaign, what’re you still doing here? Start planning your YouTube ad placements right away.
