Guess what? Advertising on Youtube is better for local businesses than advertising on TV.
Before I get into the specifics as to why, let’s take a look at the evolution of content discovery, things have changed significantly over the past 40 years and the past 15 years, digital has changed the game all together. Take a look.
1.) The audience on Youtube is HUGE and it’s growing on a daily basis.
Find more statistics at Statista
When you think about TV, how many households have Tivo or DVR? 81% according to a recent study. It’s probably even larger. How often do you record your TV shows? Many households are actually pulling the plug with having cable or satellite. According to Pew Research “The number of “smartphone-only” homes, in which smartphones are the sole source of online access, has climbed to 13% in 2015, up from 8% in 2013.” These cord cutters are growing rapidly because of the amount of content available via smart TV’s and over the internet.
So Why is YouTube advertising better than TV Advertising?
Let’s look at how you can target on YouTube Advertising that you can’t do with TV.
2.) Specific age group targeting
With youtube ads, you can decide to target and bid on very specific age groups. If your audience is males between 25-35 and you only want to serve ads to that age group, then no problem. Targeting by male / female or age group is no problem.
3.) Very tight geographic targeting (hyper local)
With YouTube, you can target down to a zip code or a specific radius of a location. With TV, the stations have huge bleed over to markets you don’t always serve. It makes more sense to only target in an area you actually want to get customers from.
4.) Price
Pricing is comparable to TV in some situations, but even if the price is equal to TV, then by having specific demographic and geographic targeting options it makes more sense to run YouTube campaigns instead of TV. How much do YouTube ads cost?
Average CPMs on YouTube (cost per thousand): $17 – $24
Average Cost Per YouTube View: $0.10 – $0.20
5.) Reporting Metrics
For reporting metrics, this is where YouTube advertising absolutely crushes TV advertising. This is a screenshot of a few small YouTube campaigns. In this reporting screen shot, I only selected the fields that I wanted to see, there are plenty more reporting fields that can be pulled in. As a digital and creative advertising agency, I want to see what ads the audience is engaging with most and which ones they’re actually receptive to, this helps us change creative and messaging based on what’s working the best. Reports like these help us decide what our audience likes and doesn’t like.
It’s difficult for me to justify a TV campaign for a local business. As and example, in Shreveport Louisiana (200K city population 2013) I’ve tested running around $3,000 per day on targeted Youtube pre-roll ads that are typically 15-30 second spots. If I know I can spend up to $3,000 per day on youtube ads, that would be $90,000 on YouTube advertising in a small market per month, there are not many businesses in southern markets that are doing $90K per month on TV buys. The point is that track ability, geo targeting and demographic targeting on YouTube is far better than TV, so I can’t justify a medium like TV unless I’m already at a saturation point with YouTube. Leave a comment if you’d like to discuss.
The Edge Ideas is a Louisiana based advertising, marketing and creative advertising agency with offices in Shreveport, Lafayette and New Orleans. Meet Our Team.
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