By Published On: July 23, 2019 - Categories: Industry Insights OTT

You’ve got video assets and a keen audience. You want to build a strong and growing revenue stream alongside a deeper relationship with your customers. So what is the best way to use YouTube to monetise your video assets?

From its launch in 2005, YouTube has grown at breakneck speed to be the world’s top online video website and the second biggest search engine. But for all its strengths, it doesn't meet every need.

YouTube - the good and the bad

Let’s start by looking at what YouTube is built for - it’s a video-sharing site designed to earn revenue, mainly through ads. Although it supports paid subscription channels and pay-per-view content, the vast majority of videos can be watched free of charge.

If you have videos, you can build a channel, stream on demand or live video, and access anonymised analytics. It also has a huge potential audience as the second most visited site in the world. Some individual YouTube creators have built huge audiences, such as PewDiePie’s 96 million subscribers at the time of writing.

YouTube’s downsides all stem from its core function - video sharing. As a publisher, you have no control over what else the viewer sees around your content so there’s a risk of negative brand association, promoting your competitors, or worse.

YouTube’s design always encourages the viewer to keep watching videos, not to click to your chosen landing page. Monetisation from ads only works if you get a lot of views. You don’t build a direct relationship with your audience, and you don’t get much data on your viewers.

Make YouTube your friend

The key to using YouTube successfully as part of a wider video strategy is to use it as an advertising platform, not as your sole video platform. Its massive audience gives you a ready-made pool of online video viewers. As a publisher, your job is to find the audience segment that responds to your content and whet their appetite for more.

We looked at three brands who use YouTube successfully to attract audiences to their own video offering.

1. Mirror your channel
The simplest option is simply sharing your content exactly as you made it. Channel21, one of Germany’s biggest home shopping TV channels, stream live on YouTube as well as using broadcast TV, their own website and mobile apps. On demand programmes on YouTube include multi-hour chunks of the live broadcast and shorter clips on individual products or topics.

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