Adaptive Medias Inc (fka ADTM)

[newelong]

Don't let YouTube own your audience!

Josh Lamb
CEO/Executive Producer at Multipop

Feb 2, 2015

Just ask yourself this question, “If YouTube shut down today, what would happen to our video strategy?”

Currently, many content creators use YouTube because it is “free” (upfront), intuitive and gives instant access to an enormous audience. Furthermore, there are easy to integrate revenue opportunities to help start monetizing your content, especially if you do not have an existing infrastructure. Lastly, YouTube is a great way to potentially be “discovered” by an audience who can easily share your content across various channels/platforms.

This is where the benefits of SOLELY using YouTube end. What a producer finds is that while YouTube has many initial advantages, its long-term limitations become a massive scaling issue, and, ultimately, negatively affect revenue potential.

For example:

1) YouTube owns YOU, YOUR audience, and YOUR data: This is perhaps the biggest barrier for long-term success and revenue potential for content creators. YouTube owns all of your subscribers’ information, including their email addresses, disabling you from marketing to them directly.

2) You take the risk, YouTube reaps the reward: YouTube leaves all the upfront monetary risk to you and your content; they focus on monetizing the back end.

3) The scale will always be out of balance: To build off the previous point, content creators have to share anywhere from 30-45% of revenue with YouTube and most likely you will pay for most of your views too!

4) There’s a HUGE advertising conflict: YouTube gets to charge you for advertising to promote your channel, then sell the audience you brought to YouTube to other advertisers or content creators, which may compete AGAINST you.

5) EVERYONE is in the pool: While it is great to be “found” on YouTube, it can be just as difficult to grab attention with all of the noise around you. A prime example: Covergirl Cosmetics makes a major investment into their YourTube channels, yet while searching for those channels, I found two “ads” (for rival products) first, then in the “organic” results section there were five random channels ahead of Covergirl.

What can a content creator do with their audience, content and revenue without being completely dependent on YouTube?

1) Use for marketing activation: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are great activation points to reach and connect with new audiences, but they should not be the final destination for your content. Ultimately, you should have a strategy from day one on how you will transition your audience to a destination you own and control.

2) Create your own destination: Drive the audience to your site. YouTube has annotations (albeit clumsy) and other small drivers to help push viewers to where the full experience can be found. When an audience loves your content, they will go anywhere to watch it.

3) Spend wisely: Do not spend too much money marketing your YouTube channel; use that money to drive traffic to your destination. The same goes for Facebook and Twitter, as they are great marketing activation and communication mediums, but should never own your audience. A great example here is Zynga; Facebook changed a couple of rules and it nearly destroyed their entire business model.

4) Be aware of limitations: YouTube is inherently limited on actual channel interactivity, essentially restricting it to commenting underneath the video. If you own the destination, you can be free of rules and limitations to constantly enhance your overall user experience.

5) Maximize revenue: If you OWN your audience and the data that comes with it, you have limitless opportunities to make money on your content. No one else’s model is limiting your revenue.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-let-youtube-own-your-audience-josh-lamb?trk=mp-reader-card

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