Video content is seriously big news in today’s online world. Recent research suggests that more than two-thirds of all personal-use internet traffic will be video content by 2017, with this figure set to rise ever higher.
With video content at an all-time high, it follows that video advertising is also a surging trend. While Vine, Snapchat and Instagram have made inroads into the online video scene, it is YouTube and Facebook that dominate. The key question for marketers is which gives the best returns for online video advertising.
Facebook Video is growing massively, reaching eight billion daily views in 2015. It is easy to assume that Facebook will one day overtake YouTube; however, it is important to understand that Facebook and YouTube measure ‘views’ very differently, making a genuine comparison impossible.
Facebook counts a ‘view’ after just three seconds, whereas a YouTube ‘view’ is recorded after 30 seconds. To push home the message of YouTube’s dominance, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently told Business Insider that YouTube delivers hundreds of millions of hours of video every day.
How should firms decide which platform delivers the best results in terms of video advertising? The smart move may actually be to consider them both, as they each have their own unique strengths.
YouTube for organic search
YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the world’s second biggest search engine with over one billion users. For anyone looking to grow traffic via organic search, YouTube would be a sensible choice.
It is vital to pay attention to keywords in video titles, tags and descriptions when producing video content for YouTube to maximise your reach. Companies such as www.rycomarketing.ie, a leading Dublin SEO agency, are likely to recommend the same kind of keyword analysis and optimisation strategy for YouTube marketing as for traditional digital content to make the channel work hard for advertisers.
Facebook for niche targeting
While YouTube’s strength lies in organic search, Facebook steals the show when it comes to targeted traffic, enabling advertisers to direct their marketing spend at very specific niche groups of consumers. This feature lies behind much of Facebook’s phenomenal video advertising growth.
Facebook and YouTube may be locked in a battle for viewing numbers; however, it is clear that marketers need to utilise the two side by side.