Last week, YouTube (and Google) announced the introduction of a new marketing service on YouTube…called YouTube Sponsored Videos.
What is it?
Well, it’s a lot like Adwords for video. Here’s how it works:
You produce a video that promotes your product or service. You go to YouTube Sponsored Videos and bid on keywords. When someone on YouTube does a search based on those keywords, a thumbnail link to your video will appear in the right sidebar of the page, under a section labeled “Sponsored Videos”. If they click on your video thumbnail, you get charged.
I told you…it’s a lot like Adwords.
But here’s the big difference in terms of marketing. When someone clicks-through to your video, they still have to watch your video and be compelled by it enough to actually go to your web site. In other words, if someone clicks-through, watches your video (or part of it) and then goes away…well, you’ve gained nothing.
So producing compelling videos that get people to take action will be critical for anyone using YouTube Sponsored Videos (as a shameless side note, this is exactly what I teach people how to do in my The Secrets of Creating Web Videos That Sell course).
However, unlike Adwords, with YouTube Sponsored Videos you don’t have to worry about quality scores and landing pages (yet). YouTube Sponsored Videos is so new that it’s wide-open for everyone. If you remember Adwords back in 2003, well, it’s kind of like that. That’s another way of saying that this new service is a potential goldmine for fast-acting and savvy Internet marketers.
To see how sponsored videos work, just go out to YouTube and type in a very competitive keyword…say “diet”. You’ll see sponsored videos appear in the right sidebar of the results.
To learn more…and even sign-up for YouTube Sponsored Videos…just click here.
This is also going to create more demand for video production as well. Great post. Thanks!