Last updated on June 15th, 2024
How do you customize the YouTube embed player? What do skippable ads mean for YouTube marketers, creators and users? How to develop an advice series for your channel?
HOSTS:
- Dane Golden: VidAction.tv | LinkedIn
- Tim Schmoyer: VideoCreators
- Matt Ballek: VidiSEO
This podcast is brought to you by the 2014 ReelVideo Summit, where marketers, storytellers, brands, and retailers gather to get serious about online video. The ReelVideo Summit takes place July 24-25 in San Francisco at the Hotel Nikko near Union Square.
THIS WEEK’S TIPS:
Tip #1: How to Develop an Advice Series for Your Channel?
Tim Schmoyer went on a trip a couple of weeks ago and so he had people in his community submit videos for that week. This video, from TheJosh, who gives guys dating advice, offered some great advice for how to decide what kind of specific topics you should make your videos on.
TheJosh recommends that instead of making one big video on a topic, think about specific needs and questions that your audience has, then a build an entire video series around those topics. He uses the autocomplete function in the YouTube search, which shows the most popular relevant adjacent searches. Then he’ll make videos answering each of those questions. TheJosh also suggest you listen closely to your subscribers and commenters. Those questions can be turned into videos. In each case, when people search on these questions, your YouTube channel will come up.
Tip #2: What do Skippable Ads Mean for YouTube Marketers, Creators and Viewers?
Dane Golden asks if you’ve ever wondered if YouTube creators get paid if you click the ad skip button? Or, conversely, do advertisers have to pay for a view if a user clicks the “Skip Ad” button? Well, in the YouTube TrueView system (aka AdWords for Video), the pre-roll format is known as In-Stream. Advertisers only pay when you watch 30 seconds or more of the video (unless the video itself is shorter). And creators only get paid if you watch 30 seconds or longer – they don’t get paid if you skip the ad.
According to TubeMogul, only 15-25% of In-Stream ads are played all the way through to completion. This means that creators only get paid for about a quarter of their views. It also means that advertisers will get higher viewcounts even if people don’t view the ads, just the five seconds before the “Skip Ad” button appears. Dane has made it clear that he doesn’t advocate buying views for views sake, but that’s how the system works.
Tip #3: How Do You Customize the YouTube Embed Player?
Matt Ballek did a blog post on the various ways you can customize the YouTube player when you embed it. It turns out there’s many more options than just copying the code pops up for you when you click “Share” then “Embed.” For instance, what if you want linking annotations to appear when the video is watched on YouTube.com, but not on your website? There are some code options to do that and much more.
Matt’s standard customization is to add these bits after the video URL:
- ?rel=0
- &showinfo=0
- &autohide=1