Blogging is becoming harder and harder because I am never sure when I can start talking about something a partner does. Generally speaking, I err on the safe side, because it’s the right thing to do.
But seeing how YouTube “sell it your own damn self” ad strategy is in the open, I do want to comment about one thing:
While YouTube will continue to sell some ads, by opening up content owners’ respective inventory, video content owners will now be pitching the same underlying media property - YouTube - to a lot of the same advertisers.
After all, while social media sites (such as YouTube) are hard to monetize, YouTube is one that many marketers want to be on, so long as the content is safe. But the pool of advertisers who would advertise on such sites remain relatively small.
Moreover, since a lot of the most popular legal clips are music videos and those are not always advertisable, there is a lot of demand for safe, ad-friendly content. Incidentially, this is one reason why WatchMojo.com has the editorial strategy it has, but I digress. As I say: first comes content, then distribution, then monetization. Distribution is all but locked up and growing.
So don’t get me wrong: I love this decision, especially as a former ad executive.
But by adopting this “sell it your own damn self” ad strategy, advertisers are now going to be pitched the same fundamental opportunity: advertise to YouTube’s massive audience and that might create channel conflicts. Translation: if YouTube is doing this to a) sell more inventory and b) boost rates, it might accomplish a) no doubt, but b) becomes almost impossible.
The only hedge towards this, frankly, is to be able to deliver what you promise to advertisers. Online, said delivery boils down to delivering the impressions you sold.
Advertisers look for a number of things. For content owners to succeed on YouTube, and in generating revenues in general, they will need:
- reach, as measured by audience size
- relevance, as measured by demographics
- frequency, as measured by publishing cycle
- fit, as measured by content. This can also include surety of content.
Online marketers will also look considerably at engagement, or time spent on a site, but I think that is BS because advertising is actually always obtrusive and unwelcome, and engagement is one buzzword the social media experts coined to look smart.
Anyway, all of those things are important, no doubt. However, I will break my rule of talking about partners and add one thing, the one thing that YouTube has had a challenge with, and the one thing that is not even directly mentioned in the list above. I think this is the reason why they are adopting this “sell it your own damn self” strategy, and that is predictability… not predictability of content safety, but predictability of volume.
Marketers don’t care if your video or channel generated 1M streams last month; they need some assurance that you will generate 1M streams going forward. Few can do that. I think we can. So far, so good.
In other words, not only does a video (or channel) need to be broadcasting high-quality content, safe to advertisers, match their target audience etc., but they also need to be able to deliver the impressions that advertisers look for.
You can sell a $1M IO (insertion order) but unless you deliver the impressions, you will only actualize a few pennies on the dollar. I once sold a $300K per month deal, it actualized at $52K. That was frustrating… that day was caught on film, by the way.
For the record, YouTube has been net-net a solid partner. I get along very well with the folks there. In fact, when WatchMojo.com launched, co-founder Steve Chen would even be the one who would sometimes reply to my suggestions and inquiries. Of course, times have changed: YouTube is now a high-profile unit of Google. I cannot fault them for experimentation, particularly something like this “sell it your own damn self” that I basically pleaded with them to offer us.
I am not sure if YouTube will be the property that will command the lion’s share of ad dollars in the video space. I am pretty sure that despite their smaller sizes, the media companies will be able to do that (News Corp., CBS, Disney, NBC Universal, Viacom etc.)
But when it’s all said and done, this is something I expected to happen the day Google bought YouTube (if not sooner) and this is why we have been sprinkling our thousands of video clips across dozens of categories and tried to keep every clip evergreen. Whether or not that strategy spells success on YouTube and the broader video landscape remains to be seen… but I certainly like the direction that the industry is going in.
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