Once upon a time, TV advertising reigned supreme. All a company had to do was purchase ad time during a popular TV show and they were pretty much guaranteed ad exposure to a large number of people. Now, it’s not that simple.
TV is Becoming More Expensive and Less Valuable
According to Deloitte’s Digital Media Spend Survey, 69% of consumers in 2019 paid for some sort of Internet streaming service, whereas only 65% paid for cable or satellite television. More and more consumers are opting to watch their favorite TV shows online when it’s most convenient for them.
To meet traditional advertising goals, TV commercials must be run at a higher frequency in order to garner the reach it once could. In the end, this is more expensive and it still doesn’t reach as many people. That’s because more and more people are consuming their favorite video content online.
To keep up with this big shift in consumers, businesses are going to need to shift their advertising budgets to focus on digital video advertising. While it’s not yet necessary to forego TV altogether, it’s important to move their budgets online. In comes YouTube.
YouTube: Reach More Targeted Customers Online
We’ve blogged about YouTube before, but it’s becoming one of the most valuable advertising channels. It’s effective in reaching audiences of all ages and demographics, and its advertising dollars go further than similar amounts spent on TV ads.
For example, let’s look at two different companies that targeted two separate demographics. In a 2019 digital campaign for their Reese's Christmas Trees, Hershey was able to reach an audience largely disconnected from traditional TV: millennials and Gen Z. For a fraction of their TV budget, Hershey reached a growing number of consumers that would have never seen the ad on TV.
Similarly, AARP used a digital video campaign to target the 45 to 65 demographic. They found that spending money on YouTube video advertising was three times more effective than TV alone. AARP spent $51 to reach 1,000 unique viewers aged 45-64 online (or a $51 CPM). In order to reach that same amount of users on TV, they had a $164 CPM.
However, it’s important to note that neither Hersheys nor AARP is replacing TV entirely. Rather, AARP strived to combine TV with digital video advertising to reinforce one another. The latter allows for greater flexibility and creativity.
Additional Benefits to YouTube Advertising
While we mentioned this briefly in the previous section, it’s hard to overstate just how large YouTube’s reach really is. YouTube has over 2 billion active monthly users and more than 5 billion videos are watched every day (that’s more than 82,000 YouTube videos every second).
In addition to an enormous reach, here are three key benefits to YouTube Advertising:
Advanced Targeting
YouTube allows you to target your audience in many different ways. Not only can you target audiences using traditional demographic data like age, gender, and location, you can also target based on their actual intent. For example, if someone searches “pizza near me” then they are clearly interested in finding a pizza restaurant near them. However, Google now has more than 7 digital properties with over 1 Billion users each month, meaning they are able to capture these intent signals across all of their platforms. They are then able to leverage these intent signals in different types of audiences.
For example: let’s say Scott is continually searching for content relating to the 2020 Subaru Forrester. They searched for it on Google, looked at a few different ones for sale on an Auto Trader App,and watched a YouTube video about it. Scott would then be considered “in-market for a 2020 Subaru Forrester”—meaning you can now target him with a YouTube ad.
Consumer Behavior Influences
YouTube videos are shown to have an impact on purchasing behavior. For example, according to a YouTube Insights Report, 72% of auto vehicle purchasers said that YouTube influenced their buying decision.
High Return on Investment
YouTube typically has a higher return on investment for video ads than traditional tv. Plus, YouTube has a wide variety of advertising options to suit your budget.
The Future of Video Advertising
If you haven’t already, it’s time to shift a portion of your advertising budget into digital video advertising. Don’t know how to begin your video advertising strategy? We can help you with that.
We specialize in assisting brands execute effective video advertising campaigns. It’s important to note that you shouldn’t put your entire advertising budget into just one channel: we recommend creating a multichannel campaign to best reach your targeted audiences and to optimize your advertising budget.
Want to talk about it? Reach out to us today to learn more about how Netsertive does video.
Coleen Kinen-Ferguson
Coleen Kinen-Ferguson is the Inbound Marketing Manager at Netsertive. When she's not busy writing blogs, drafting content strategies, or collaborating with the marketing team, you'll probably find her at the gym practicing aerial acrobatics.
