If you're an avid user of YouTube like I am you'll know that they've integrated advertisements into the viewing experience.
So far the ads aren't too intrusive and you often can skip them if you want.
One effective campaign that I've noticed is the "Be a Donor" campaign. Over the past month I must have seen their ad 50 times, it seems to be playing before nine out of every 10 videos that I watch.
Basically it's an Ontario (Canada) program that allows you to register online to be a organ and tissue donor.
They've done a good job over at the beadonor.ca Web site in that they've kept it simple. Videos describing why you should be a donor and a simple button to sign up to be a donor.
The ads on YouTube are short (15 seconds), straight forward and they aren't annoying to watch.
In an ironic twist, I'd like to embed the ad you see on YouTube, but the ad itself doesn't seem to be on YouTube as a stand alone video (you can only see the ad if you are watching a different video and that ad happens to be the ad that runs prior to doing so).
In addition, all the videos on the beadonor site are embedded in the site alone and are not on YouTube (that I know of). So I can't even embed said videos in this blog post.
Thumbs up to beadonor for using YouTube to reach people, I think it's a much better use of marketing dollars than traditional television for instance.
However, slightly negative marks on not making their video content easily shareable (this is why any video content you create you should have on YouTube as well as your site, so that it can be shared easily).
In addition, it's the same ad that runs over and over on YouTube, which after a while will become annoying to some people. Beadonor should have tossed five or six variations up there to keep things fresh and give the campaign life.
Remember, people who use YouTube tend to use it a lot.
In addition, it's critical to track site traffic and user engagement. When people visiting beadonor.ca start to decline, it's time to pull the campaign.
This is an important point for PR folks to remember - that is not to overstay your welcome in the world of social media.
For instance, you may have paid for a three month advertising block, but if 'click throughs' dry up after a month, all you are doing for the next two months is interrupting people's viewing experience, which can start to generate negative sentiment.
Unlike television ads where you simply run whatever you've paid for, on a platform like YouTube / Internet you want to be able to halt your campaign once you've attained the benefits you were looking for and user engagement starts to drop dramatically. Continued exposure, unlike in television, does not have a zero-sum effect, it can actually be harmful to be overexposed in these mediums.
All in all though, thumbs up to beadonor.ca, they are the first organization to successfully reach me via YouTube. I suspect their campaign will be highly successful given most people are happy to be a donor yet it's not something they ever think to do anything about.
So far the ads aren't too intrusive and you often can skip them if you want.
One effective campaign that I've noticed is the "Be a Donor" campaign. Over the past month I must have seen their ad 50 times, it seems to be playing before nine out of every 10 videos that I watch.
Basically it's an Ontario (Canada) program that allows you to register online to be a organ and tissue donor.
They've done a good job over at the beadonor.ca Web site in that they've kept it simple. Videos describing why you should be a donor and a simple button to sign up to be a donor.
The ads on YouTube are short (15 seconds), straight forward and they aren't annoying to watch.
In an ironic twist, I'd like to embed the ad you see on YouTube, but the ad itself doesn't seem to be on YouTube as a stand alone video (you can only see the ad if you are watching a different video and that ad happens to be the ad that runs prior to doing so).
In addition, all the videos on the beadonor site are embedded in the site alone and are not on YouTube (that I know of). So I can't even embed said videos in this blog post.
Thumbs up to beadonor for using YouTube to reach people, I think it's a much better use of marketing dollars than traditional television for instance.
However, slightly negative marks on not making their video content easily shareable (this is why any video content you create you should have on YouTube as well as your site, so that it can be shared easily).
In addition, it's the same ad that runs over and over on YouTube, which after a while will become annoying to some people. Beadonor should have tossed five or six variations up there to keep things fresh and give the campaign life.
Remember, people who use YouTube tend to use it a lot.
In addition, it's critical to track site traffic and user engagement. When people visiting beadonor.ca start to decline, it's time to pull the campaign.
This is an important point for PR folks to remember - that is not to overstay your welcome in the world of social media.
For instance, you may have paid for a three month advertising block, but if 'click throughs' dry up after a month, all you are doing for the next two months is interrupting people's viewing experience, which can start to generate negative sentiment.
Unlike television ads where you simply run whatever you've paid for, on a platform like YouTube / Internet you want to be able to halt your campaign once you've attained the benefits you were looking for and user engagement starts to drop dramatically. Continued exposure, unlike in television, does not have a zero-sum effect, it can actually be harmful to be overexposed in these mediums.
All in all though, thumbs up to beadonor.ca, they are the first organization to successfully reach me via YouTube. I suspect their campaign will be highly successful given most people are happy to be a donor yet it's not something they ever think to do anything about.
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