S15 課文補充 YouTube's advertising effect - eight years after its birth

Since YouTube was founded back in 2005, the site has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for advertisers in eight years.

It’s not hard to see why. As the third most visited site on the internet YouTube now has over one billion unique users a month, and sees over 100 hours of video uploaded each minute.

In terms of the impact that YouTube has brought to video campaigns, there are probably several prevailing trends.

A quick look at big-hitting campaign videos that went viral such as

Evian’s ‘Roller babies’   

or

Blendtec’s ‘Will it blend?’

show the kinds of numbers that brands using YouTube as a platform to entertain can achieve. But there’s more to it than that. As research from the Evian campaign showed (up to 80% of people who watched the clip wanted to talk about it, and over 65% wanted to share it), YouTube can be an incredibly powerful platform to house the ammunition to ignite word of mouth.

As with any format, YouTube takeover for ‘Wario Land: Shake It’ in 2008, which shook the whole page, destroying the headlines and captions as it did so: it still holds up as a good example today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHEtj5T6OQ4

The flexibility of the platform was used to perhaps even greater effect in 2010 by Sylvester Stallone’s movie ‘The Expendables’, and gave a taste of the guns and explosions-ridden film. It also showed that an emphasis on production values was becoming more important and, with a Hollywood star playing the lead role,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKc_P6iLVwA

The technique drags the viewer deeper and deeper into the story, which works as a strong metaphor for the issue at hand, and creates an immersive linear storyline. – a trend also used powerfully by Dove ‘Evolution’ back in 2006.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U&html5=1

It’s impossible to say what the most impactful advertising video on YouTube is as they all have different objectives. But the Old Spice responses campaign will always stand out because it combined all the trends to dramatic effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqlVi5DGuo&list=PL484F058C3EAF7FA6&index=13

With results like that, it’s not surprising that YouTube has become a must-have element in video campaigns.