Any seasoned marketer knows that video is now proven to be one of the most effective content tools brands have available. Studies show that quality video content brings more people to your site, keeps them there for longer and increases the likelihood that they will become a customer. So, for today’s marketers the question is no longer ‘shall we do video?’, but more importantly; ‘where shall we host it?’
This decision frequently boils down to two options: Invest in your own paid-for online video platform (OVP) or stick to a free (or nearly free) video player like YouTube or Vimeo. But there is a third choice that is often overlooked – do both.
So what makes the two options so different, and why might you need both?
All eyes on YouTube
The biggest advantage of both YouTube and Vimeo is their popularity, which makes them highly effective platforms for building brand awareness and ensuring you can get eyeballs on your content. The Middle East and North Africa region is ranked second in the world in terms of video views per day at over 310 million. It is even ranked ahead of Brazil and is second only to the United States.
This translates to approximately 14.5 million watch hours every day. The average Internet user in Saudi Arabia watched three times as many videos daily versus the average user in the US. According to Ipsos’ 2014 report, YouTube is the third most-used app among smartphone users in the UAE, and is also in the top 10 most-used apps in terms of time spent per day.
With more than 1 billion average worldwide monthly visits, YouTube is one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet. It’s also the second most popular search engine, next to Google. While Vimeo is not as popular as YouTube, it still draws more than 100 million average worldwide monthly visits.
With such large audiences, YouTube – which remains at its core a social network – also offers brands a ready-made community with which to engage and facilitate a conversation around their content.
For these reasons, several marketers think free players are the way to go because they can reach and engage with millions of viewers without significantly impacting the marketing budget, and to a certain degree they’re right. However, although these platforms can be brilliant from a simple brand awareness perspective, there are a number of trade-offs if you are using free players exclusively.
The high cost of free
While free players are a great way to build and promote video presence at no cost, brands often find they may end up ‘paying’ a high price in other ways. While you will be able to reach millions, when your content lives on another site you surrender the ability to manage how viewers interact with your brand and what type of viewing experience they have.
A viewer could see competitor content or adverts pop up next to your videos, or the recommended videos that appear in the ‘Up Next’ section could be completely off-message for your brand and not something that you would want to be associated with.
And the problems might not be limited to just the content around your video – a third of YouTube users report that buffering interrupts at least half the videos they watch, prompting them to abandon the video altogether.
And the final key trade-off is that using a free OVP as the only hosting solution for your brand means that your content is also effectively building someone else’s platform, driving their website traffic and growing their brand. Not only do both YouTube and Vimeo also limit your company’s branding and customisation options on your channel, but in addition when you embed their player on your site, their own branding shows up which can impact your own brand credibility.
Premium player, premium ROI
To overcome some of the disadvantages of free players, premium OVPs offer brands the opportunity to own and control the video experience, giving audiences a much more in-depth interaction with the brand and ultimately driving a much stronger and more tangible return on investment (ROI) for their efforts.
Embedding videos on your own site through a premium OVP – rather than YouTube or Vimeo – means viewers are more engaged in your branded environment without the distractions. With no adverts, competitive noise, or third-party logos, your brand can take centre stage. Integrating video into your site like this also improves your SEO because your brand ‘owns’ the video file.
Premium players also tend to have a more complete suite of metrics than their free counterparts. Advanced real-time analytics allow you to track viewership at an individual level and analyse how much of the video people watched and what they did afterwards. Feeding this information into marketing automation platforms can really help to identify when viewers convert to leads and more effectively track ROI and campaign outcomes.
Blending the best of both
So, the answer to the question of whether to choose a free or premium OVP is actually quite simple: you should use both, but make sure to tailor how you use them based on their individual advantages.
In this way, a blended video strategy could combine the social-sharing strength of YouTube or Vimeo to build brand awareness with the capabilities of a premium OVP like Brightcove on your own site to boost SEO and grow your business.
You’ll end up getting the best of both worlds – the result of which is an optimised video marketing strategy that delivers on reach, ROI, flexibility, functionality and support.
