Broker Roundtable: The Importance of YouTube as a Source of Names
Welcome to Broker Roundtable, where each week we ask list brokers to give their opinions on issues that matter to the marketing community. This week’s question: How important have YouTube and other online video sites become as sources of new names?
Our panel includes Matt Kaiser of Veradata, Lori Kelly of DirectMail.com and Michele Volpe of Media Source Solutions. Would you like to be considered to be a member of our roundtable? Contact Larry Riggs ([email protected]).
Matt Kaiser, executive vice president of Veradata:
They’re not important—at least not yet. While YouTube, vimeo and other video sites are aggregating user information, they have yet to emerge as major contributors to mainstream marketing lists.
Video, not surprisingly, is going to continue to grow in the online marketing sphere. Companies like Vidfluence, that offer private video management platforms, are helping marketers get on the leading edge of the video revolution. Nothing can convey marketing stories like video and nothing compares to an authentic video testimonial.
The search engines give more weight to videos than other site content, and the average user engagement is three times longer on sites with video. All of the data points to video becoming a big piece of our business. As a result, these services will eventually package the data for broader use in marketing lists.
Lori Kelly, list manager/broker, DirectMail.com:
YouTube and online videos have become important marketing channels, benefiting small- to medium-sized businesses. Any exposure to a public audience is beneficial to a business, as it builds name recognition and adds to customer files. At this time, YouTube names are not readily available to the end user. Most YouTube user lists come from self-reported (survey) information. If these names become more available for marketing purposes in the future, they could become a major source of marketing leads.
Michele Volpe, vice president of sales and marketing, Media Source Solutions:
The information we collect from sites such as YouTube helps us to get a glimpse into the consumers interests and helps to predict buyer behavior. With the decline in universes from our old tried and true sources, we must look outside of the box for new ideas that will help us penetrate the same markets with good results. Testing is one of the keys to determine the most effective way to harness the new web based sources.
Testing one source against another and being able to suppress certain Ad ID’s is helpful to learn which sites have the best results. This is still a new area that we are all trying to incorporate into successful campaigns. There is a plethora of this type of data available and we need to find a way to use it to its best advantage.
