Benefits of Advertising on YouTube

On June 16, I posted about “My Results Testing YouTube Video Ads” and then look what I found in my mailbox in August…

There’s only one explanation… Yup, Forbes editors are obviously reading my blog. :)

In all seriousness, I couldn’t agree more with the cover of Forbes this month. YouTube is certainly changing the media game, and this should be music to every small business owner’s ears. There’s never been a better time for small businesses to reach their target market via the traditional 30-second commercial spot.

Let me explain what I mean using the current YouTube stats:

More than 1 BILLION (with a “B”) unique users visit YouTube each month.
Nielson reports that YouTube reaches more US adults (18 – 34 years old) than ANY cable network.
Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube and that number is growing every year.

As you can see, YouTube is kind of a big deal. What I found most interesting was that second bullet regarding the demographics. I was always under the impression that YouTube was just for high school and college kids to watch videos like “Gangnam Style.” But check out the real data below for the demographic breakdown.

There’s a pretty good chance your target market is watching videos on YouTube. Even B2B advertising works, which I proved back in June with my original test results.

Also, if you’re a local business, you can target your specific geographic area, so you only reach prospective customers in your city or town.

So what’s holding you back from testing this relatively new advertising platform?

Is it the ad costs? Can’t be because I’m advertising for $0.10 per view and there’s no minimum ad buys in YouTube. With those prices I can get my 30-second commercial in front of 1,000 prospects for only $100.

Is it the production costs? Nope. As I mentioned in my post in June, I was able to get a video created using a website like Elance.com for $200.

As long as you know WHO your ideal prospect is and you have a compelling offer, then there’s really no good reason to not give YouTube ads a try.