YouTube’s popularity is increasing year by year, and as of June 2019 in Japan, there were over 170 channels with over 1 million subscribers.
In addition to enjoying YouTube on devices such as smartphones, tablets, and PCs, it seems that the number of users who are enjoying YouTube on TV screens is also increasing.
Is advertising keeping up with the digitalization of video media?
The Google Media Lab team used their company as a test case by running ads on TV and YouTube. The effectiveness of each advertisement was compared.
Source: YouTube What happens when you run out of ads? Verifying the “possibility of reach”
Conducted ad distribution tests a total of 4 times
This survey was conducted in the second half of 2019.
The investigation was conducted as follows.
- 1st week: Place TV commercial
- Week 2: Deliver YouTube ads with the same target viewership as TV commercials
- Compare the results of week 1 and week 2
This test was run a total of four times.
Details are below.
Source: YouTube What happens when you run out of ads? Verifying the “possibility of reach”
It turns out that YouTube ads are superior in reach speed
The survey results are shown in the graph below.
Source: YouTube What happens when you run out of ads? Verifying the “possibility of reach”
Combined with TV commercials and YouTube ads, it reached 65.5% to 77.8% of its target audience.
Of this, YouTube alone contributed 65.2% to 75.3%, with a reach rate 1.1 to 1.4 times higher than that of TV commercials.
Although there is a deep-rooted image that “TV is the main reach, and digital advertising is a supplement,” the results of this survey revealed that TV actually played a supplementary role.
In terms of reach speed, we can also see that YouTube ads were more successful from day one.
What are the factors behind the excellent reach of YouTube ads?
This study shows that YouTube advertising has shown remarkable results, but what is the reason behind this?
The Google Media Lab team makes the following three points.
- Combination of 15 second video ads and 6 second bumper ads
- Use pre-bookable ads
- Utilize the “Frequency Cap” function
Bumper ads, which play for 6 seconds, can be placed in a wide range of ad slots. The study found that a 15-second video ad was able to reach a sufficient audience among young people (men and women aged 18 to 34) in the Kanto area.
However, by using bumper ads when distributing to a wide range of people, it seems that they were able to gain a larger reach.
Analyzing that the use of ads that can be booked in advance to avoid running out of ad distribution slots during the research period was also a factor in the company being able to gain a wide reach in just one week.
Frequency capping is a feature that limits the number of times an ad is displayed to the same user. Limiting the number of ad encounters per person during the research period also contributed to reaching more people efficiently.
This study revealed that YouTube ads can reach people who have turned away from TV and can achieve great results.
It can be said that YouTube plays a very important role in digital marketing.
Source: YouTube What happens when you run out of ads? Verifying the “possibility of reach”