This morning I read a MarketingVOX article highlighting how YouTube just surpassed 100MM viewers in January. That’s great news for video commerce, right? It’s all fine and good that YouTube has such a vast audience, but the more pertinent question for video commerce professionals is: should you care, and if so, why?
Unfortunately, I think this is one question that hasn’t really been adequately examined by many video commerce professionals, and like many questions worthy of examination, the answer isn’t always clear cut. So let’s take a critical look at YouTube’s role in the video commerce ecosystem and outline the potential benefits and drawbacks around YouTube for video commerce. I really want people to throw counter arguments to some of these statements… please, tell me if I’m wrong.
First, some of the benefits:
1. Audience. For brand building, viral video, and awareness-oriented video, no video platform tops YouTube’s audience. It’s still a garden rich with opportunity for marketers centered on achieving these goals. The question I’d pose to video commerce professionals is this: are these in fact your goals? E-commerce merchants sell products. Brand marketers build audience. There is a difference. Unless you can clearly correlate increased views or impressions with sales, what’s the point?
2. Cost. Anyone can publish video to YouTube, for free. YouTube hosts content, for free. YouTube even lets you launch a channel, for free. Of course, nothing is ever *truly* free, but still, this is a huge plus in the YouTube column, especially during the protracted recession. The most powerful word in marketing is still F-R-E-E. Go YouTube.
3. Tools. YouTube has come a long way in the tools area over the last year. The site now offers more capability for integrating a custom video player on your site through their new API (although functionality is still pretty limited). Plus, the service now supports high definition video - a major leap forward in quality. The community features on YouTube aren’t half bad, either. YouTube is actually launching a program to share some of its lesser known features with the broader YouTube community. I expect we’ll continue to see YouTube focus on improving the quality of its tools.
4. Great Source of Content. Are you looking for product videos? Aside from perhaps ExpoTV, there’s not another video sharing service that comes even close to YouTube in terms of possessing such a wide variety of product video content - and, perhaps contrary to popular belief, not all the content is UGC. Many brand marketers and product manufacturers post their videos to YouTube. It’s a treasure trove of video content, much of which you can use to rapidly fatten the library of videos used in your video commerce program - provided you’ve got systems and processes in place to make it scale well.
Now, we’ll focus on some of the drawbacks.
1. Ads. YouTube calls their new ad overlays part of their evolving “e-commerce” program, but don’t be confused - YouTube isn’t thinking of e-commerce in the way you or I might. They’re thinking of advertising. Recent reports show 25% of Google searches occur on YouTube, and YouTube is interested in selling ads and extending Google’s reach into YouTube. How excited are you about having your video running with a competitor’s text ad overlaid on top?
2. Loss of control. Even with a custom player, YouTube forces the display of related videos at the close of each video. Remember YouTube’s goal is to drive eyeballs, not sell with video. Which means that related videos could feature videos completely unrelated to shopping on your site - or worse - drive people to videos featuring ad overlays from your competitors, or worse still - directly to your competitor’s videos.
3. Limited functionality. E-commerce merchants are about selling products, so it’s only natural to look for video technology that helps accomplish this aim. Want to merchandise your products or other e-commerce videos in a YouTube video? Forget it. Publish your videos to other syndicated video services? That’s not in YouTube’s interest - strike two. How about integrate videos into your affiliate or email programs? Nope. How about engagement tracking, web analytics integration, and other sophisticated reporting? You’ll get little to nothing in that department, too (though I suspect YouTube will continue improving in this area).
4. YouTube channels. I have to crack a slight grin when retailers tell me about their great YouTube channels. Truth be told, I have yet to meet someone who could give me a *really* straight answer about how well their channels actually perform - and it’s no wonder. YouTube Channels not only are built with 1998-esque tools with limited potential for custom branding (even in the branded channels), but even with the best SEO in the world, these channels don’t move people to product pages through the videos. If you think this is just an ‘oversight in functionality’ on YouTube’s part, you’d be wrong. Remember, YouTube is about advertising. They want to power millions of TV channels so THEY can sell advertising in the videos.
Do you think this online retailer is proud of the customer experience they are delivering through their YouTube Channel? You be the judge.
All this brings be back to Point #1. Most online retailers are not interested in monetizing videos through ads - with a few notable exceptions. In today’s video commerce industry, the videos themselves are the ads. The purpose of the videos is to drive traffic to e-commerce sites and generate sales.
In today’s video commerce industry, the videos themselves are the ads. The purpose of the videos is to drive traffic to e-commerce sites and generate sales.
What do you think? Has this post adequately represented the main benefits and drawbacks of YouTube for video commerce? Please let me know your thoughts - and, as always…
Happy Selling!
March 9th, 2009 at 8:15 am
I’d like to throw my two cents into this discussion. My Father used to tell me, “Use the right tool for the right job.” The same thing applies to using YouTube. There are certain aspects of YouTube that are worth exploiting. For reference, please visit our profile: http://www.youtube.com/fansedgevideo
1) Crowd Sourcing. You’ve probably seen contests which use YouTube as the means of acquiring content from users. Some companies pay YouTube for the ability to host their contest on branded pages (http://www.youtube.com/contests_main). But there is another way - a FREE way. After setting up your profile, you can set up a Group. “The YouTube Groups section is for everyone and you can run your unofficial contest through your own Group for free! Starting a Group allows you to create a proper forum where videos falling under the same category can be collected, viewed, and judged. All you really need is a YouTube channel and some creative ideas.” You can also moderate a Group to only allow approved videos and comment.
2)Custom Video Player. This is the perfect way to embed a lot of content in one place with one interface. First create a playlist of all the content you want to share. Next go to your account settings and set up a custom video player. Make sure you set the player to show the playlist you made. Now grab the embed code and place the player anywhere you want. Anytime you make changes to your playlist the player updates instantly and globally. This is a great way to share your content as well as user generated content. Here’s on of ours: http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=cpb&player_id=V8acQ7SMXnM&datatype=playlist&color1=5d1719&color2=cd311b&border=1&data=F5E5279BA48F3C38&t=KD83gDBiCSF_1Co5h7zXbqxrdXtpHKLSqiJhVRf_KNU=&sk=dWnmoluckn3V–IY6UJVGLG4LqedaboRC&eurl=&BASE_YT_URL=http://www.youtube.com/&use_get_video_info=1&load_modules=1 I also should point out that when using the customized player, the videos play in order without interruption and they do NOT show any related videos after each one.
3)Annotations. Have you seen the pop-ups on YouTube videos lately? Not the advertisements, but speech bubbles and notes? They can be useful in directing the viewer to your site or adding info to their experience. For example, when you watch one of our athlete interviews there’s a note reminding viewers that they can buy autographed memorabilia from that athlete at our website.
4) Branding. There are still a few things you can do to brand your presence on YouTube. You can upload .jpg’s to be the background image of your profile. You can include links to your site in your profile description as well as in the video descriptions.
5) Special Interest Content. If you’re hoping people stumble across your content on YouTube, then you need to give them what they’re looking for. We leverage our relationships with professional athletes to get content that we can brand and place on YouTube. Of course, this also takes some crafty SEO tactics (naming conventions and tagging) to get found, but the result has been several thousand brand impressions on viewers.
Just some thoughts for now. We’re still exploring the possiblities and deciding just how useful YouTube reallys is. It’s be great if someone had success stories to share…
March 11th, 2009 at 12:31 am
YouTube is definitely not fit for large business which need to fully control their users’ experience with video. However, I fully expect YouTube to do well for small businesses, because it’s easy, free and opens up massive audiences.
Take a look at what AskTheBuilder.com is doing on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/AsktheBuilder
Interesting, isn’t it? That’s why I wouldn’t totally discard YouTube a low-end video commerce solution: people actually use it already as a way to generate leads and attention for their “real business”.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
John,
These are some great comments and feedback for our readers. I wanted to ask you a bit more about the custom video player because I’m not convinced of the value - but I might be wrong on this.
With e-commerce video, merchants are engaged in a process to drive shoppers to transactions, regardless of how close the viewer is to the transaction (consideration, awareness, etc). Therefore, I question the value of displaying related videos in a custom player unless those videos are in some way related to the products featured or being sold in the primary video - in other words, when related videos are employed as a cross-sell strategy. I do understand the value of related videos from the perspective of video as a media used to drive engagement, but I don’t know how something like this would help drive incremental sales unless there were some kind of product tie-in.
Justin