YouTube Advertising is on a Roll
Back in April Jeremy Krantz wrote about how Google was changing the ad platform of YouTube to incorporate PPC ad targeting. This change means that now relevant ads are displayed to users on YouTube as opposed to unrelated ad content.
Today, comScore released a study of online video sites which included statistics on Video advertising. Not surprisingly, YouTube had the second highest number of ads views with 136 total ad minutes for the month of April after Hulu. This number alone may not seem that impressive (especially when compared to Hulu’s 670 minutes) but a look at the same study for January 2012 shows that YouTube was not even listed in the top 10 video ad properties. However, in February 2012 YouTube shot to the number two spot. This means that in the past three months YouTube ad views have increased significantly.
There are two primary reasons why this could be happening. The first is that Google could be increasing ad placement on the site. The other is that with the advances that have been made to Google’s ad platform more relevant ads are being shown to people so more people are watching them. It could also be a combination of the two where more brands are buying YouTube ad space because they know that Google is tweaking their platform.
Some advertisers might see this study and say “Hulu has been at the top of this list the whole time clearly that is where my money should be spent.” Looking at the other numbers in this study, however, a very different conclusion can be made. While Hulu has more ads on their site with a greater frequency per user than YouTube YouTube’s reach is over two times that of Hulu’s. This means that more people in the U.S. population are seeing YouTube ads than they are seeing Hulu ads.
One more interesting factoid to start your weekend off right. In the January study it was stated that 12.2% of all videos viewed online were ads. In the April study this number jumped to 20.5%. This number is pretty impressive especially considering how much online video content is viewed every day. This just goes to show that video advertising is certainly a force to be reckoned with.
Tags: PPC
