Promotional videos: how the internet is changing the way products are being advertised
Before the birth of video hosting juggernauts YouTube and Vimeo, Television was the primary domain for advertising or promo videos.
We can all remember staying up late at night during the 1990s and seeing countless Tae-Bo infomercials telling us that a fit and attractive body was only a phone call and a credit card purchase away. For the most part, this method was, and still is, widely successful and encouraged people to spend untold amounts of money on home fitness videos, clothing, video games and anything imaginable.
But the advertising industry, like all industries, is always devising ways to target specific audiences with increased accuracy and efficiency. For example, it’s very common to see advertisements for women’s fragrances on a channel like “We T.V.”, whose viewership in the United States comprises mostly of middle-class women. This targeted approach to advertising has helped companies increase the success of their marketing campaigns, have record-breaking profits and keep their investors very happy. But advertising as a whole changed once YouTube came onto the fold.
Promo Videos: YouTube is the New T.V
Created in 2005 by three former employees of PayPal, YouTube has not only become the most popular Video hosting site in the world but also one of the most trafficked sites ever. According to Google Inc. (the owner of YouTube), YouTube has over 1 billion unique users per month. That means 1 out of every 2 internet users frequent the site. This presents an attractive opportunity for advertisers. With the internet and all of the technology behind it, advertisers can closely observe a YouTuber’s behavior on the site and tailor promo videos that specifically target them. YouTube constantly aggregates the demographical data about its users, giving advertisers insight about YouTube’s diverse audience. Ads can be targeted only towards male viewers, African-Americans living in Texas or White females living in England. The possibilities are almost endless. Because of all this, advertisers have been shifting and refocusing their energies toward YouTube and the Internet at large at an expeditious pace. There are simply too many opportunities for advertisers to ignore. Television is slowly being replaced as the dominant platform for video marketing. Will advertisers fully transition to the Internet from Television? Unlikely, as Television still has a large market share and will most likely continue to do so. But as the years go by, video marketing by way of promo videos on the Internet will progressively become a more attractive option for advertisers and the next Tae-Bo-esque fitness program will be advertised before your favorite YouTube video begins to play.