The most popular video platform, YouTube , has not been going through its best moment in recent months.
After a British newspaper reported that major brand advertisements appeared in videos with violent or extremist content, many advertisers decided to stop showing on the platform.
Google's biggest mistake was trying to treat YouTube as an extension of television to make it more attractive to advertisers.
However, the characteristics of the digital video ecosystem , from what its audiences are like to how advertising is sold, are radically different from those of the "idiot box."
And one important element has been overlooked in the industry: digital media is not just one platform but 7 or more major platforms with YouTube being the most important in terms of video.
All of these platforms share the same space but have different business models, measurement systems, user behavior, and advertising models.
Ciara Henderson, director of strategy at VIDRIO, offers us in brazil phone number Barnd Quarterly some of the premises that have been ignored in the digital industry:
1. In the digital world not everything works the same way
2. Programmatic is the process of buying advertising at scale and is not the same as behavioral targeting.
3. Behavioral data, which over-individuates consumers, is not preferable to less data.
4. Independent measurement and verification are not necessary
The complexity of the 2.0 environment is precisely its precision. While ratings are based on the extrapolation of data and samples, digital offers exact measurements.
"While ratings calculate an average audience, digital shows precisely how many times a piece of content has been viewed, who has viewed it, and sometimes whether a purchase has been made. And that is something that television cannot do ," he explains.
Independent measurements are not necessary in the digital world. YouTube has a direct-to-advertiser advertising model whose metrics accurately and immediately show the effectiveness of the investment.
Henderson therefore rejects the industry's recommendations for ensuring so-called "brand safety" on YouTube: restricting the supply of video through video inventory and promoting third-party verification.
Why? Because both solutions try to imitate the television measurement model (independent verification, large audiences, limited ads, limited inventory) which only increases the cost of advertising.
The success of the digital video ecosystem and YouTube in particular lies in its ability to reach hyper-fragmented audiences through user-generated content as opposed to the masses of television.
In this way, while television crosses its fingers to reach consumers, digital media allows reaching the desired consumer at the desired time.