In the world of advertising, YouTube pre-roll is hot, hot, hot.
But in the world of basically everyone who hits play, pre-roll ads are something that typically bring out the most creative swears known to man.
Today, Google Partners like The Silent Partner Marketing received an email from the big boys at the search engine monster. Guess what? They're going ad-free.
But, as we'd expect, ad-free doesn't mean it IS free.
Here's the email:
Dear YouTube Partner,
Your fans want choices. Not only do they want to watch what they want, whenever they want, anywhere, and on any device they choose, they want YouTube features built specifically with their needs in mind. Over the past several months, we’ve taken bold new steps to bring these experiences to life. Since inviting hundreds of thousands of fans into our YouTube Music Key Beta, we've seen tremendous engagement. And we've seen an equally enthusiastic response for our new YouTube Kids app, designed to give families a simpler and safer video-viewing experience— it’s already crossed 2 million installations in less than one month.
We’re excited to build on this momentum by taking another big step in favor of choice: offering fans an ads-free version of YouTube for a monthly fee. By creating a new paid offering, we’ll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising revenue.
So what’s next?
Launching a new paid offering will require us to update your terms throughyour Creator Studio Dashboard—a process that should feel familiar to anyone who went through a similar process three years ago when we began distributing and monetizing your content on mobile devices. Today, mobile represents over half of all watchtime and mobile revenue is up 200% in the last year. Just as with mobile, we’re confident this latest contract update will excite your fans and generate a previously untapped, additional source of revenue for you. Please look out for our notification, review it and let us know your thoughts.
It’s an exciting year for YouTube, as we push ourselves into uncharted territories. But we continue to be guided by a desire to deliver the choices fans want and the revenue you need. By working closely with you, we know it’ll be a successful journey.
The YouTube Team
To our friends at YouTube - it's about time.
Nearly two years ago, we started shifting content over to Vimeo (while also still distributing on YouTube). The Vimeo Pro opportunities were relatively inexpensive ($199 for the year), and allow for greatly enhanced statistics, tracking and measurement, customized intros and outros, greater embed functionality and the ability to block ads (among other features).
Through extensive testing, we've also found Vimeo now ranking just as highly in most cases - and above, in some cases - as YouTube.
Go figure.
Let's take a second and look at some of the biggest video marketing stats that we should all keep in mind for 2015.
- According to Forbes, 65% of executives have visited a vendor's site after watching a video.
- comScore found that visitors who scope out videos on websites end up spending on average two minutes longer than those who don't.
- According to Wistia, 59% of viewers will watch a video to the end...if it's under a minute long.
- Videos on landing pages boost conversion rates by 80%, according to Unbounce.
- According to Forrester, video included in emails increases click-through rates by 200-300%.
- comScore also found that 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after viewing a video about it.
Time for you to weigh in. Would you pay for an ad-free YouTube? What platforms are YOU using for video marketing?
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