YouTube Begins Offering Ads With Buzz Targeting
Early this week Google CEO Eric Schmidt in an alluded interview said that it plans to turn YouTube into a money-minting machine. And now Google is ready to share more details about its high priority of making more money off YouTube’s popularity, introducing an advertising product on Tuesday called “Buzz Targeting,” that makes a ton of sense.
“YouTube has started offering advertisers the ability to pair their in-video ads with videos the site believes are on their way to becoming viral hits.”
Since advertisers have no clue over what is going to be popular on the site, YouTube will watch over videos that are getting an acceleration of viewing, favorite and ratings, and give advertisers the capability to piggyback on this group of videos.
Buzz targeting may deserve the hype, though, as the statement continues. The YouTube product team created an algorithm it states can recognize videos that are on the up and up in terms of audience. It makes that evaluation by looking at factors such as the early acceleration of views on a given clip, along with the number of times it is “favorited” and the number of ratings it receives. The Google-owned platform hopes the feature will appeal to entertainment marketers and to those pushing products with broad appeal, according to a spokesperson.
“We believe buzz targeting is a strong marketing opportunity for any advertiser that wants to offer compelling content alongside the most popular videos taking off on the site,” the spokesperson said. “It is an opportunity for them to wrap themselves in the experience that is YouTube itself.”
However, the catch here is that the only videos YouTube includes in the algorithm are produced by “YouTube content partners” — largely professional producers of content from the studios, record labels and TV networks, not the random user-generated content that made YouTube famous, and still does.
The ad product uses an algorithm to find videos that are about to “go viral,” when word of mouth (or IM, or blog, or e-mail) promotes a Web site to a phase in which it spreads like wildfire. In this case, ads are overlaid on the bottom fifth of viral videos supplied by YouTube partners who share ad revenue with the search giant.
YouTube content partners include like Universal Music Group, NBA, and CBS; amateur creators such as Brookers and Daxflame; and recording artists like Ashley Tisdale.
The first advertiser to use the program was Lionsgate Films’ “The Forbidden Kingdom.” For roughly the past month, the distributor has advertised the Jackie Chan/Jet Li martial arts vehicle on approximately 500 of YouTube’s most popular music and entertainment videos, YouTube said. Buzz targeting joins other YouTube ad targeting factors such as geography, time of day, gender and age criteria.
“The feature is currently available to advertisers in the United States.”
YouTube and other Google sites hosted more than 4.3 billion video views in March, accounting for 38 percent of all U.S. video traffic. During that month, U.S. Internet users increased their video intake by 13 percent gain compared with the previous month, and by 64 percent compared with March 2007.
YouTube has frequently introduced new ad-related features in recent months. Six weeks ago it debuted an analytics product designed to generate a wide range of data about who viewed their videos, where they viewed them, and when — information that can be applied in planning future video programs.
So far, YouTube ad campaigns have been more targeted to specific demographics. Buzz targeting adds a broader option, though the ads still are sold as categories such as entertainment or how-to, a YouTube representative said.