It’s Time to Get Off the Tube
For many marketers, YouTube has been the place to post content due to it having more than 50 million active users. With 3 billion searches per month, YouTube is the second largest search engine. However, Google in comparison has 3.5 billion searches each day. The average YouTube user spends 40 minutes per session which would be great if they were using it on your videos, but that is not the case. 500 hours of videos are being uploaded to the platform every single minute, and therefore, the challenge is to make your content stand out and increase your viewership, and your audience will most likely end up watching content from other brands.
If something is free, you are the product.
YouTube exists on the principle that users will eventually click on an ad, which is why YouTube is trying to keep the users on the platform. In fact, YouTube beats any cable channels in ad revenue.
On YouTube, you control very little of the brand experience while driving traffic away from your website if you are using embedded YouTube videos on your site. Instead, the better choice would be to keep your visitors on your site since you have no control of what the viewer will do next on YouTube. Therefore, they might end up watching a related video from a competitor or something completely different, which is YouTube's attempt to make their users spend as much time on the platform as possible. Instead, you would want to keep them engaged in your content.
Right to monetise
Did you know that your competitors can run ads on your website when you are embedding YouTube videos onto your website? YouTube has recently updated their terms of service stating that they have the right to monetise all content on the platform. These terms confirm that nothing is for free. For companies uploading content on the platform, this means that ads from other channels may appear on videos of channels not being part of the YouTube Partner Programme. This way, YouTube has the right to make money from your videos, however, you will not be getting any of the payment.
The better option is to use a video platform, like TwentyThree, where you can drive visitors to your site and keep them there. Our platform will allow you to embed the videos on your website which will optimise SEO performance of the page in order for you to drive traffic on your website, and you will also be able to get rich engagement data. However, this does not necessarily mean that you should avoid YouTube, but you should only be using the platform to your advantage by uploading teasers of your video content to YouTube to lead the viewers to your site.