Is It Better to Advertise on YouTube?

Yusra Assawi
Nov 1 · 2 min read

YouTube has changed the world, and made everything easier for the audience. However, I am not sure if this platform (YouTube) made it easier for brands to advertise or not. The question on Harvard case ‘YouTube for Brands’ (Would brands follow by spending a larger portion of their TV advertising budget dollars online?) is difficult to answer. In this article, I will express my opinion, and share my own experience with YouTube advertisements as a user.

We were all used to YouTube as a neat platform with limited advertisements, thousands of videos are uploaded on YouTube every minute so it was and still #1 for updated events. However, the new YouTube “after loading tons of Ads on each video” affected the platform differently, and made it easier for competitors to start a battle. The company (YouTube) generated millions and millions of dollars with this new strategy thinking that adding some more of Ads would not harm but yet increase their revenues. In my opinion, it is a chaos; now when I want to watch a video I have to wait for at least 10–15 seconds to do so. Some videos contain not only one ad but two! This can be really frustrating especially when I am not sure if this is the right video I am looking for or not. So jumping through the page in harry to find a certain video but have to stop on each video to watch some ads is really time consuming. Adding to that, none of the Ads are suitable for the content. Most of the time when the Ad starts I just sigh and put my phone away till the Ad is done or till I can press “Skip Ad”

YouTube Ads vary from very professional ones to phone recorded ones. Subsequently, there are many Ads on this platform since no strict strategy to advertise on YouTube. It is somehow helpful for startups or for personal publicity, but does it affect big brands? It differently did. All the Ads I believe are treated on the same way, no matter if this Ad cost 10 thousand or 10 dollars, they all can be skipped or only watched for 5 seconds. As a brand I would refuse to enter the market with other small brands that has no standers not knowing where my Ad would appear and to which customer? All these plans and studies are made better on the TV strategies, but yet it would be less costly to use YouTube as a platform for Ads.

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