There’s More to Digital Video Marketing than YouTube

YouTube is booming. A recent analysis from Jefferies valued the company at up to $40 billion—more than Twitter. And marketers have taken note, using the platform to share content as digital video continues to rise in popularity. However, based on July 2014 polling by Demand Metric in partnership with Ascend2, it takes more than YouTube to generate the best return on investment (ROI) for video marketing. Instead, responses from marketing professionals in North America indicated that hosting video on one’s own website and external sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo, produced the best results.

Thanks to the convenience of platforms like YouTube, the percentage of respondents using just external sites to share content was nearly four times that of those only using their own websites, at 43% vs. 11%. However, combining the two host types indicated that websites weren’t totally devoid of video: 46% of marketers used a combination of their sites and external platforms to share such content—a way to “optimize benefits.”

A look at respondents’ preferred way to host video content suggested that the industry was moving toward a much more combined future. Nearly two-thirds of respondents favored a combination of their own websites and external sites, while 23% chose external platforms and just 14% internal sites.

The study suggested that this combination would result in the best ROI. As a result, nearly 60% of marketing professionals said it was important to have a brand-controlled—secure—video-sharing channel. And responses indicated that owned platforms allowed them to gather more data on their video audiences. Among those who said having a brand-controlled platform was somewhat or very important, 65% said so because of the value of video viewing data about sales funnel leads they provided.

Courtesy of eMarketer

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