Right now, selected videos on user channels have autoplay, while videos on brand and partner channels feature click-to-play.

How long this glitch will be live is unknown.

Update: 11:45 PM – The bug is now fixed by YouTube. All things back to normal.

Before I begin this post, perhaps it is necessary to explain the difference between YouTube branded versus partner channels. The key difference is the way Google makes money on them. Partner channels have a rev-share between Google and the content owner on advertising placed in and around the content. Only media companies and users with original and popular content are eligible to become part of YouTube’s partner program. Branded channels, on the other hand, are paid-for positions listed under the section sponsors.

Currently, brands can set up a branded channel (or brand channel, as Google calls it) on YouTube in return for a certain commitment in ad spend: in most European markets the minimum is 25k for a brand channel with default templates and 60k for a contest channel. This commitment means that the advertiser gets an identical budget in AdWords (YouTube + Google content network) or buys at rate card (YouTube only). Underlying links in the display ads are required to link back to the channel. For more detail, read my previous post on branded versus partner channels.

Monetizing YouTube

As we all know, Google is not making money on YouTube, yet. Although things are picking up, there is still much more room for improvement. Therefore, here is a list of suggestions that Google should seriously consider if they want to monetize YouTube:

Brand channels as a separate product

Although the current method of linking brand channels to ad spend is a way of driving traffic to the channel (and selling more ads on YouTube), brand owners do not pay directly for the pleasure of having a brand channel. Being on YouTube for users is like eating a bag of potatoe chips – you can’t just eat one. Given the right video content, there is a lot of value for brands and media owners in having that expanded ‘More from this channel’-box. Value they currently do not pay directly for. Just the ads that drive some traffic. So Google should start by placing value where it is generated – the content and the channel, not merely the required ads. I’ll bet YouTube can get more brands and media owners to commit a lower fixed annual fee (say 5-10k) than having to commit 25 or 60k in ad spend. Once a successful channel exists, brands and media owners tend to integrate it with multiple campaigns.

Brand channels as a conversion tool

Many brands and media owners ask me how much traffic a YouTube channel will generate. Either towards their own site or that of a trade marketing partner. Given the current choice between a partner and a brand channel, neither seems to be a perfect fit for these types of goals. Aside from a direct link inside the video description, there is no method of driving users directly from the video to a next stage in the  sales funnel. That is, from a brand channel. With partner channels, you can buy in-video advertising positions – but not exclusively. Brands want to entice audiences with a great branding message on YouTube first and subsequently persuade them to visit their site.

Example: a video that explains what you can do with your Blackberry, with an overlay ad to buy the phone in Vodafone’s e-shop. Other media owners want to use YouTube for generating views and – exclusively – drive traffic to a set of trade marketing partners. For example, a producer of fitness videos wants to direct traffic to sites of gyms.

Since Google does not place advertising around or on top of brand channel content, enabling these channel owners could generate additional revenue. Channel owners should be allowed to assign ads to specific videos (with DART), or allow a sub-set of specific AdWords users (i.e. their trade marketing partners) to bid on the videos. This way, YouTube becomes more than a way to generate views: a conversion tool.

Global branding, local marketing

Channel names are currently available on a ‘first come, first serve’-basis. Unless as a brand you have not paid attention, it is a good thing to sign up on YouTube with your brand name, even if you are not using it right away. Although Google seems to be respecting trademark laws, it is always better to be safe than lawyer-y. Provided that you have the channel (and signed up correctly, see point x) on YouTube, you cannot use a single channel for local marketing purposes. True, YouTube offers possibilities to put a geo-lock on content, thus making it impossible for users outside certain geographic locations to see both the channel and its videos (see image below).

YouTube Geo-block settings: click for large image

If you have a global brand, say Philips or T-Mobile, you cannot show audiences different versions of your channel and its content. Instead, brands have to come up with silly names for multiple channels, as was the case in the recent ‘Bravia in Motion’-campaign for Sony: aside from the illegible main English channel braviainmotion, Sony created local translations for France (braviainmotionfr), Germany (braviainmotionde), Poland (braviainmotionpo), Russia (braviainmotionru), Spain (braviainmotiones) and The Netherlands (braviainmotionnl). Not much branding going on here. Google could service brands like Sony better by showing people different designs and localised video content based their ‘gl’ and ‘hl’ settings. For example, Youtube.nl/braviainmotion re-directs to http://www.youtube.com/braviainmotion?gl=NL&hl=nl.

Enable name changes

As made clear from the example of braviainmotion, it is important to pay attention to how you register on YouTube. Once registered, you cannot change it. According to research from TubeMogul, properly used metadata form a major part of the success in video marketing. This includes the channel name. If the people behind braviainmotion would have paid attention, they would have registered as BraviaInMotion instead. This improves instant legibility and thus leads to better branding in YouTube search results. Since mistakes are only human, YouTube should allow those who made them to correct them – especially those who pay to have their brands featured on YouTube.

Choose your own thumbnails

With reference to the same ‘secret’ formula from TubeMogul, thumbnails are a big thing in YouTube. By default, YouTube offers a set of three thumbnails. If you’re unlucky neither of them accurately describe what the video is about or they contain heavy movement. Even though their are ways to trick the system by editing in images at specific times in the video, paying customers should be allowed to upload a thumbnail of their own choosing. A number of partner channels are already allowed to do so, so this should be an easy change for YouTube to implement on brand channels.

External design hosting

Upon realising their channel for the first time, brand channel owners can choose to customize their channel with an animated gif as background image or choose from a default set of flash-enabled templates for more advanced channel features and design. For example the LG Channel (ExperienceLG) features a menu structure inside the video player, while T-Mobile’s Lifesforsharing channel includes even more interactive features.

Although the background image may be hosted on external sites, the set of interactive flash-templates are hosted on YouTube’s servers. This makes it difficult for channel owners to customize their brand channel based on current campaigns, unless they have to go through the trouble of setting up a new design with YouTube’s creative partners. Other social networks, such as Hyves, allow advertisers and their agencies to manage their own i-frames from external servers. They simply provide space (or canvas as they call it) to do your creative thing.

Allow special characters in channel names

Further to the point 4, legibility is indeed an issue. For a special category of brands this is even more true than others. For example T-Mobile, Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, M&M’s, Gall & Gall and Johnson & Johnson. Now this is a tricky issue, since special characters are generally used for programming purposes. For example, YouTube uses ‘&’ and ‘+’ frequently inside their search queries. It is unclear whether this is true for the dash sign. Perhaps YouTube could allow for brand owners to register their channel name in a certain way – e.g. CocaCola, but have it presented in search results as being from Coca-Cola.

That’s all, folks. Hopefully someone at YouTube is reading this. By implementing some of these suggestions, Google will be able to lose less and less money on YouTube.

Well-renowned brands are already featured with their own channels on YouTube: Warner Bros. Records was the first, followed by CBS, NBA and the BBC. Director of Strategy David Moody of BBC Worldwide motivates the Beeb’s presence as follows:

“Our digital strategy is to make our content as widely distributed as possible – and there is an audience of millions on YouTube.”

In other words, complementary reach as key argument. However, advertising reach can also be realized through banners and buttons on other portals and platforms.  The key difference is that YouTube cannot only be used to drive traffic to your own site, but bring the content to where your target audience is. In hopes that they will look at it, discuss it, embed it, forward it, or, even better, respond to it with original video responses.

The Dutch Public Broadcasters (PO) had their own reasons to use YouTube as an additional platform for their missed TV programs product,  Uitzendinggemist. PO does not use its YouTube channel for one-on-one syndication with the source site: only a selection of the offering is used. Furthermore, the videos show fragments, not the full programs. PO uses YouTube predominantly as a content snacking & teaser channel – whoever wants to see the full program, has to visit www.uitzendinggemist.nl or is directed to the full show on www.omroep.nl. Each individual video features a direct deeplink from the video description, as shown on YouTube’s watchpage. An interesting example is the teaser below for the award for the worst TV commercial, the Loden Leeuw. Just before the ‘winner’ is announced (a true cliffhanger moment) the video stops – the full version can be seen on TROS Radar’s website. An exellent example of a versioning strategy.

As a result of the number of videos featured on the channel (more than 500, nearly a million channel views and millions of video views) Uitzendinggemist strongly dominates the Dutch version of YouTube. Other Dutch media brands with a channel on YouTube include VPRO, BeeldenGeluid, AjaxTV and PSV.

Partners versus Sponsors
The attentive reader will have noticed that all of the previous examples concern media brands with unique video content. Correct. In fact, these examples are all partner channels, not branded channels. In order to add value to their site, back in August 2006, YouTube decided to set up a partner programme. Initially, the key difference between a partner and branded channel was not as clear as it is today: “YouTube’s first Brand Channel partner is Warner Bros. Records for Paris Hilton around her debut album, Paris, released globally today”, the press release stated. In exchange for attractive content, YouTube offers partner channel owners a shared revenue deal, combined with additional features to adjust the design of a channel, a small banner and an expanded screen showing more clips from the channel on the YouTube watchpage.

Being a user-centric video platform, well-known media brands don’t exclusively ‘own’ YouTube. In contrast, these brands have to compete for attention with a never-ending torrent of UGC which dominate the most viewed charts: Evolution of Dance (uncontested number 1), OKGo (recorded in a single (!) take, also see this funny video response), LonelyGirl15 (admit, directed), Numa Numa (‘everybody loves Numa’), Human Tetris (stop-motion galore), A Few Good Creative Men (‘we write ads – or people die’), etcetera. One by one,  all creative pearls.

In short, YouTube is the UGC video platform by popular choice: it offers users a possibility to share video without the hassle. Anyone can start their own user channel. Millions have done so and share there interests with a worldwide audience or a select group of friends (maximum of 25 per video). This includes the full spectrum of the long-tail: varying from a girl showing her horse without attracting too much attention (at least, until now), to an unknown Dutch teen who ended up in Oprah eighteen months later and is featured 15 times in the Dutch Top 100 of most popular YouTube videos, with a total of more than 50 million video views. Repeat out-loud: more than 50.000.000.

Following deals with media companies, YouTube started the partner programme, which includes a revenue share on all advertising displayed on the watchpage and inside the videos. Active users who create extremily popular content get awarded by YouTube through an invitation to join. “YouTube currently has more than 1,000 partners with whom we share revenue, including major media companies like the BBC and CBS,” said Jaime Byrne (YouTube’s Head of Product Marketing) in an interview on SearchEngineWatch. “The user partner program is simply an extension of the way we share revenue with any of our partners who provide content that we sell ads against.”

Not everyone can enjoy the benefits of the partner programme. Again Byrne:

“Members were invited to participate based on their past performance on the platform. The user partners announced are all popular content creators known by the YouTube community and we believe they will be attractive for advertisers. The new user partners are creating series that attract a persistent audience and have a large numbers of subscribers. We feel it’s important to reward those who are creating more than just viral one-off hits.”

The happy few includes the popular channel from Nalts, who was ecstatic with the announcement and made a special video for the ocassion:

Branded Channels
Not everyone is eligible for a partner channel status. The criteria for a partner channel have been tightened by Google while advertisers have been given the option to start a so-called branded channel. Brand name owners who may have ambitions in this direction, should be wise enough to register their own channel name  in advance (that is, set up a user account). Amsterdam Bed & Breakfast was smart enough to register the account www.youtube.nl/amsterdam. Not bad when attracting backpackers and other visitors. The account names are available on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis, although trademark owners may be respected by Google. However, Pepsi, Coca-cola, Albert-Heijn and many others did not pay attention and probably will need to get their legal staff to write some letters, if they have any ambitions for YouTube. Prevention is always better than the cure, the saying goes in Dutch.

In many ways a branded channel resembles the design of a partner channel. Both have extra design features, on the  channel page as well as the YouTube watch page:

Channel page

• Banner on top
  Can be used to upload a single image, your own animated gif or an image map (transparant banner) with multiple external links. If the latter option is chosen, the underlying background image may be used to convey a branding message, as with the channel of NBA or Rabo SportTV.
• Autoplay selected video
  A specific video selected by the channel owner or the latest video has an autoplay feature when users visit the channel page.
• Extra content box
  Extra space which the advertiser can use to describe the objectives of the channel. This may also feature external URLs.

Watch page

• Small banner
  A non-animating banner which links to the channel and is automatically displayed for all videos featured on the channel.
• Fold-out section ‘More from …’
  A function that generates a substantial number of video views on the content, since it is positioned above the related videos section. Related videos are based on titles and tags, not channel origin.

The key distinction between a branded channel and a partner channel lies in the combined design/AdWords deal. Advertisers with a branded channel are required to commit a given sum in display advertising on YouTube and other sites within the Google content network, which supports display ads. Furthermore, all links may only exclusively link back to the branded channel, not an external URL. In other words, you don’t pay for the branded channel, but for the display advertising that drives traffic to it.

Given this, is a branded channel the next big thing for advertisers? It all depends on the objectives and available content. Brand owners with a continuous flow of appealing video content are well-positioned to use YouTube to reach a broader audience than with their own site and advertising alone. A branded channel may also be used to support marketing campaigns. Examples include the CMONS campaign by GM’s Vauxhall brand, which is featured in multiple markets (UK and Spain).

That’s two in one blow for advertisers: a designed channel on a complete video platform in combination with a display advertising campaign to drive attention and traffic to it. So is it all good news? No, there is still room for improvement:

• Ping-Pong effect

Brand owners love channel stickiness. YouTube makes this difficult because a ping-pong effect exists between the channel page and the watch page. As stated above, the selected or latest video has an autoplay feature on the channel (if selected). Nearly all other videos are played back on the watch page, not the channel page. The only exception are the two videos who are placed as a video log (vlog) on the channel page. These videos, however, have a click-to-play feature and do not play in the large video player at the top of the page (see image below).

Users which end up on the channel page (for example, through a banner on YouTube/Google Content Network), are not likely to return to the channel page after they have been redirected to YouTube’s watch page upon clicking any other video than the autoplay feature. Returning to the channel only means that they will see the same video again. This is a bug and hopefully YouTube will address this problem some time in the future. Advertisers expect all there channel videos to play back inside there channel. Users are invited to experience what the brand owner has created to convey a certain branding message. More channel stickiness, please.

• (No) gadgets & YouTube Contests

Klik voor vergroting

Outside the Dutch market some advertisers have begun using a YouTube gadget in the position of the channel’s player. Mainly in the USA YouTube Contests are common and these special gadgets are increasingly deployed on channel pages from well-known brand including Swiffer Breakup, Chrysler300 or SamsungJuke. These gadgets mainly feature video content from participants, not content originating from the brand owner. YouTube contests are expected to be available in the Dutch market soon.

• Only manual statistics

For the time being, statistics on YouTube can only be gathered manually – and are therefore both cumbersome and time-consuming. An integration with Google Analytics appears to be a logic service to advertisers who want to accurately track the effects of their videos and branded channel. To all critics: this only concerns aggregated statistics, not privacy-sensitive information from individual users.

• No automatic upload

New videos can only be manually uploaded by the channel owner (for now). A recent feature includes the possibility to upload multiple videos at once. Branded channel and partner channel owners would be helped if they are enabled to upload their content via an automated process (XML/SOAP).

These issues are no reason for advertisers to ignore YouTube. The benefits of branded and partner channels outweigh these disadvantages. They only require (some) more time for channel management. Media brands are able to attract more attention and traffic to their own sites (and earn a buck or two in the process). Commercial brand owners should embrace the combination of a fully fledged online video platform with a traffic generating campaign in a single package.