The video market is dominated by YouTube even though Facebook is growing its video business.
Brands are acutely aware of the possibilities that social networks offer for video marketing, with SocialBakers carrying out a study that indicated that, in December 2014, top brands published more videos on Facebook than on YouTube. In fact, the two social networks complement each other on several levels - and therefore that it's better to opt for both.
Today, we'll be discussing YouTube and its business, as Google has just published new figures that illustrate the platform's substantial year-on-year growth. The time spent viewing YouTube videos has increased by 60% year-on-year (Q2 2015 compared to Q2 2014). This growth can be explained mainly by the use of mobile platforms, where users spend an average of 40 minutes per session, a 50% increase compared to the previous year.
A study covering 100 top brands
In parallel, Google has unveiled an exclusive study of the activities of the 100 largest brands on YouTube.
The study, which was compiled in collaboration with Pixability, examined Interbrand's top 100 brands of 2014 to analyze the brands' YouTube strategies for the first time, as well as the content that is published online, the way brands interact with users, and the amount spent on advertising.
- The top 100 brands on YouTube generated over 40 billion views, with almost half taking place since June 2014.
- The number of videos with over a million views published by the top 100 brands increased by 29% in 2015 as compared to 2014;
- The top 100 brands have uploaded 611,000 videos to YouTube;
- In total, the top 100 brands manage 2,434 YouTube channels (an average of 24.3 channels per brand on average), attracting a total of 72 million subscribers this year, a 47% increase compared to 2014.
- 10% of their videos have a runtime of over 10 minutes (compared to the traditional ad spot that lasts 15 to 30 seconds). Brands are investing more and more into long formats, which are an extremely effective way of communicating the brand message.
- Thursday is the most favorable day for the top brands in terms of the number of videos that are viewed.
Testimonials from two top brands
Coca-Cola realized that it could engage with its community base and attract new customers by providing original and relevant content on YouTube.
"We love the opportunity YouTube gives Coca-Cola to interact, build relationships and share stories that are authentic and relevant to the brand. We are really proud to be part of the YouTube community and excited by the partnership," said Chris Bigda, Coca Cola's Director of Connections Planning and Investment for Coca-Cola North America. For example, the brand organizes a weekly event to select the name of the week over Twitter. A video is published on YouTube and then distributed across different social networks.
Another brand, Wayfair, uses YouTube to experiment with innovative content while aiming to attract a new target audience. "YouTube has become an incredibly valuable marketing tool for Wayfair by providing us with a platform to deliver new and authentic content to our customers. It's exciting to see that we're also reaching new audiences for our portfolio of brands," said Ben Young, Media Manager- Wayfair TV and Video. Wayfair uses its YouTube channel to provide tutorials with expert advice and to share ideas for the home.
Testimonials extracted from the Google's AdWords Agency Blog.
Publishing videos from Over-Graph
Over-Graph enables brands to manage their YouTube channels, as well as their Facebook and LinkedIn pages and their Twitter and Instagram accounts via a single interface. Publication options include Facebook videos alongside YouTube videos.
In order to publish on YouTube, you can upload your video, add a description and a title, specify a category, link it to one of your playlists and, finally, create tags that have been created in advance. We are working on enhancing these functions, including the option to create your own tags from Over-Graph and link them to your video.
For their part, Facebook videos are fully customizable in terms of their description by using hashtags. You can publish them immediately from the app, or you can schedule them for later.
In addition to these functions that are specific to social networking, publishing your videos using Over-Graph has the benefit of allowing you to distribute a single video across multiple YouTube channels and Facebook pages at the same time.
A single upload for multi-network distribution - a useful time-saving tip!
The size of videos that can be uploaded is currently limited, and a lower limit applies compared to Facebook or YouTube, but the team are working on increasing Over-Graph's upload capacity.