Make Money From YouTube Overlay Ads For Small Businesses

We all knew back in 2006 when Google purchased YouTube for $1.65bn that Google would soon start to include some form of advertising. Since then, we have seen many different attempts come and go at finding a format that actually works. InVideo overlay ads has been one of Google's most successful attempts. This is where ads appear at the bottom of the video whilst you are watching. If someone clicks on one of your ads, the video is paused and the viewer taken to the advertisers landing page in a new browser window.
Overlay ads are not new, they have been a common feature on YouTube videos for some time. However, until recently, only big advertisers with big budgets and the right tools were able to create them. But, a new feature added to Google's Display Ad Builder tool has now made it possible for small businesses to create their own professional looking overlay ads.
This tool is available within AdWords. Those who use image ads will most likely already be very familiar with it. The tool is intended to help advertisers create ads in minutes. And now, small business owners can create their own overlay ads using the tool that can be shown on YouTube.
You simply select a template from one of the dozens available, customize it, and then add your message. Allowing AdWords users to use the Display Ad Builder tool in this way is a big step forwards. For the first time, small businesses are able to easily promote themselves on YouTube along side the big name advertisers with their huge budgets. This opens up a massive new audience for them.
However, you might wonder if YouTube being flooded with hundreds of ads could ultimately be a bad thing. Will too many ads embedded in the videos we watch turn us off YouTube making it less popular?

Adrian Key is a professional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for small business. Subscribe now to learn more about YouTube Overlay ads [http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/youtube-overlay-ads] and many other tips and tricks that will help you benefit more from advertising with AdWords today.

YouTube Extend Advertising into Video Clips

When Google bought social, non-commercial YouTube, all the financial analysts were puzzling about how they where going to make money from the £832 million purchase. Well, that conundrum may have been answered - in part at least - with the latest announcement from the internet giant; ads are to be incorporated into some of the videos posted on the site.

YouTube are hoping that their innovative approach will be as unobtrusive as their current online classifieds, placed directly by owner Google. A transparent advertisement overlay will begin 20 seconds into selected video clips, displayed in the bottom fifth of the video. If the advert is ignored it disappears after 15 seconds, however clicking on the image will play the advert. Mindful of the uproar of many YouTube users following the announcement of its acquisition by the search engine giant, Eileen Naughton, YouTube's director for media platforms said: "We are trying to be respectful to the YouTube community, whilst also working with our marketing partners. Our research has shown that less than 10 per cent of users choose to close the image overlay as soon as it appears." Evidence, Naughton claims, that the majority of YouTube's users are not unduly bothered by this latest form of advertising.

The research also showed that the traditional forms of TV advertising were not popular. Internet viewers do not appreciate a pre-roll commercial, where an advertising clip is played before the content that they have clicked to see, nor did they like an interruption to their viewing once it had started. Shashi Seth, group product manager for YouTube explains their need for a new approach: "Our experiments with pre-roll advertising showed a very high abandonment rate."

Google will be charging advertisers $20 per 1,000 page views for the service that will be rolled-out first in the USA. They are anxious to ensure that big brand names do not appear alongside inappropriate content such as pornographic or violent content and therefore avoid the embarrassment suffered by Facebook recently when brand names pulled their advertising due to it appearing on the British National Party page.

Initially, they will only be using established media partners, such as Warner Music and In addition only YouTube's 1,000 content "partners", including Chelsea Football Club and the BBC's commercial unit will in advertise by this method, which is due to roll out in the UK within months.

Using YouTube For Advertising Google AdWords

With regards to search engines, Google is number one in search volume but YouTube is not far behind and this popularity is already recognized by online business owners and marketers. They see YouTube as a good vehicle to promote products and services on the net.

The popularity of video as a form of interactive media has risen in the recent years and this is brought about mainly with the huge popularity of YouTube. And this is widely the reason why video advertising through YouTube is beginning to get popular.

But it is to be understood that YouTube advertising has a big difference compared to traditional pay per click advertisements like Google AdWords. And this is obviously because advertising in YouTube needs for you to produce quality videos and not just text ads like Google AdWords.

Therefore, for you to advertise on YouTube you need to produce the best quality videos while not forgetting on the relevance of the video contents to your business. So aside from the relevance, what are the elements of the best video contents for your video ads?

Make your videos about your business attractive to your viewers and not get them bored watching these. Your videos must be fun to watch and make viewers not regret on having their time watching your videos.

Make the person in your video presentation presentable and good to look at. Make it a point that this presentation is enjoyable and not monotonous.

Make the video presentation somewhat interactive and present the person in the video as like talking directly to viewers. It should also be in a manner that viewers would like to answer back the presenter's questions.

Anticipate that your videos may have viral effects later and give you lots of traffic thus the importance of adding text links on the video titles. This outcome should be well prepared because of its possibilities, and the effects that social media can give to popular video production.

To produce the best quality videos for you, it may be wiser to hire a professional in this regard. This is a video ad, anyway, and not an amateur video presentation, so a professional is much needed for better quality results.

Video Advertising For Your Small Business

Why are videos a good option for small businesses? Creating a video is a great way to tell the story of your business through a more personable medium than written text. Advertising your small business with videos is not only a great way to share your story, but a well-executed video can also set a professional tone for your business.

Videos are a great way to gain exposure through a variety of marketing channels. Some of the most popular channels are uploading the video to YouTube, displaying the video on your website, and sharing it on social media accounts. Now there is a new channel available with the recent release of Google's new AdWords for video. You can now create paid advertising campaigns with your videos to gain more exposure and get more leads. Continue reading for more information about using the new video advertising platform.

About AdWords for Video

This new advertising platform is very similar to the existing Google AdWords tool, making it easy to use for those of you that are already familiar with AdWords. Here are a few of the top reasons why you should consider using this paid advertising platform to market your small business:

• Geography - you can choose the audience you want to target by city, state, zip, or country. This can be a great advantage to a small business that wants to tailor the campaign to a specific target market.
• Budget - you can set your own budget and there is no minimum spend limit. With no minimum spend limit it is a great option for small businesses that want to test the paid advertising space and not spend their whole marketing budget.
• Reach - you have the option to advertise your video on YouTube and tens of thousands of other websites.
• Return On Investment (ROI) - since you only pay when someone chooses to play your video you can rest assured that you are getting value out of your marketing dollars.

Why is YouTube Slow? Learn How to Fix If Your YouTube is Running Slow

Many frustrated users addicted to video streaming ask this question. Although the sudden slowdown of the giant video site occurs occasionally at the user side, people are clueless what could be the cause of this problem. It is understood no body wants to wait long for videos to load and then watch them especially if the videos are longer and are in several parts. Faster streaming is the need of every internet user. If YouTube runs slow sometimes then there are surely some reasons behind that. Most people are not sure what to do in such a situation and make the videos load faster in YouTube.

Before I share the guidelines to deal with this speed slowdown I would invite you to think of the reasons which result in YouTube errors such as sluggish streaming, flash crashing in YouTube and other YouTube videos errors. There are two major reasons which result in these annoyances. One is the problem at the user end that includes PC speed, Internet speed, PC Windows errors, PC programs conflict such as Flash issues, while the second reason may be caused by the server or external internet traffic load. Although the web site is very effectively maintained there appear some troubles sometimes. This, however, is not a big issue as we all trust the services provided by such a user friendly web site. The issue becomes serious when video errors and slow speed becomes a routine. This has to be something to do with the personal computer one is using.

Here I am outlining some tips that will help you to make YouTube faster for you:

* Start from repairing your Windows registry and fixing your Windows errors that become the cause of many browser and applications errors causing a conflict situation.
* Test your computer for viruses and spyware.
* Run SpeedTest to test whether you have sufficient bandwidth available to smoothly play YouTube videos without causing the site to run slower.
* Disconnect your internet and then reconnect it to know why is YouTube slow and whether it is because of the poor internet at your side.
* Disable ads through some of the browser plug in that will allow you to run fewer background services while you are playing videos online.
* Try to change your flash player version. Although the YouTube has started to stream videos through a new technology there is still a large number of web sites using the flash platform. So it is a nice idea to try to change the flash player version to play videos without crashes and error messages.
* Try to change your browser. One good browser to play YouTube videos is Chrome. If you have not tried that go for it. Also contact your ISP provider if they are limiting your bandwidth at specific durations of the day.
* Also recommended that you do the following steps if the YouTube is slow due to DNS related settings:

YouTube Changes Algorithm When Ranking Videos

Because YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, more and more companies are beginning to see the value in creating videos to help engage and inform their audiences. Oftentimes a "how to" explanation is best understood through a video, and it usually doesn't cost a company much to put something together and post it on the site, so it's an easy decision for most. So what's the catch? Sometimes optimizing this video isn't as simple as one would assume, and things are about to get more difficult.

For those who are unfamiliar, you have to optimize a video the same way you have to optimize an article. In other words, you want your search engine (in this case YouTube) to understand how it should rank and place your video based on certain keywords. Unfortunately, what so many understand about YouTube optimization is going to be short-lived-YouTube is following in the footsteps of Google and has officially changed their algorithm when it comes time to rank videos.

YouTube Algorithm Changes Explained
There was really one big difference that we saw with the update: clicks are less important. This goes for both the video as well as the ads connected to the video:

• Time is more important for content. In the past YouTube focused heavily on the number of clicks a video received. The problem with this was the fact that videos with catchy headlines were getting all of the attention. Now, YouTube is focusing more on the time that someone spends watching the video.
• Time is more important for ads. Not only is the time a user watches a video more important than simple clicks, but this same logic also goes for advertisements. If you want your video to rank higher, people will have to sit through those ads.

YouTube also made other, smaller changes that you can read about on the YouTube blog post. For example, the search engine will also take into account how long someone spends on YouTube and not just how long he/she spent on a particular video.

YouTube Algorithm Change Downsides
Most agree that YouTube is moving in the right direction, but some haven't found the changes appealing. Controversy was sparked amongst those who are posting fifteen minute-long videos. It's now going to be harder for these types of videos to beat out the two and three minute ones that are easy to watch, which isn't something YouTube has yet discussed.

It is also interesting to think about those who post on YouTube as a way to gain exposure. This large group of people will likely have to rely on other avenues to gain exposure, get popular, and hope that it's enough to get people to actually search for their name.

So what about businesses? It's too soon to tell whether or not businesses are pleased with the updates or not, but in the end YouTube is going to do what it feels is right, and this usually means new work for marketing departments everywhere.

What This Means for Businesses Trying to Utilize YouTube
Companies will have to change their strategy with the new algorithm in mind if they hope to continue to really get the most from YouTube. There are a few different ways that a company may want to change their strategy:

• First, make sure that your ads aren't going to cause someone to click off of your video. It's true that nobody really wants to sit through an advertisement, but they will if they really want to see your video. It's the others who aren't sure whether or not they care about your video that you really want to grab with your ads.
• Second, consider creating two or three short videos as opposed to one long video. This will give you a better chance that someone will stay on YouTube and your videos (this was also true before the update!).
• Third, it's important to understand that your company will likely want to focus it's efforts on really promoting these videos on social media and the company website. Simply relying on optimization might not be enough.

The changes are significant, but this doesn't mean that businesses have to go back and re-optimize everything. Utilizing keywords in your Meta data is still important; the updates are merely just another layer to the system.

How To Understand Analytics On YouTube: Using Traffic Source Data To Improve Results (Part 1)

Understanding analytical information about how and from where your visitors reach your YouTube videos allows you to make informed strategic decisions on your content publishing output. The implications affect your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, video title choices, raise your profile, and help establish connections within your niche.
YouTube's Traffic Source statistics can help you measure your performance within YouTube and see the effectiveness of specific campaigns and techniques employed to boost viewing figures. This article reviews the some of the options available from YouTube's Traffic Source tool and how you can use it to enhance your publishing strategy.
Advertising: Many people look at advertising as a key way to earn an income on YouTube. This tool helps you measure the return on investment (ROI) you are receiving from your paid video advertising campaigns. ROI is an indicator of how successfully your campaign efforts have helped you generate an income. YouTube's advertising tool shows you the number of visitors you've received from Google Media Ads and other services such as YouTube's Promoted Videos. By adjusting and refining your adverts depending on the results, you can maximise your budget by focusing on your most successful campaigns, keywords and platforms. Using the information gathered from other tools such as External Links, you can determine where to place future adverts and raise your profile.
External Links: This figure is a valuable indicator of your SEO impact beyond YouTube. If you've been promoting your Channel on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blog site, etc. you can see each site's effectiveness to drive viewers to your content. It will also show other external sites with which you're not directly associated but who have referred your content.
Use the opportunity to forge relationships with these sites where appropriate. This insight tool provides you with a useful understanding on where your target audience congregates on the internet. You should use this to build up your customer profiling data and to raise your own presence there.
Google Search: This provides you with highly useful information on the keywords being used to draw viewers to your videos via Google's search engine. It shows you the terms viewers searched for on Google to find your video. It highlights the need to use appropriate keywords within your video titles, captions and descriptions. This will have a real impact as it will boost your search result and Search Engine Optimisation rankings (remember that YouTube is owned by Google).
No-link referrer (embedded player): In this instance, another user has embedded your video on their own site. The statistics here refers to the number of people who have seen your video whilst it's embedded on that user's page. For example, if you have an informative, accessible and entertaining video that is important to your niche, other users might embed it within their own site to add value for their visitors.
Drilling down in this tool, you can review the most popular sites that have your embedded video and the number of views generated from each. Use this as an opening to forge relationships with other site owners to help you raise your profile and develop working opportunities.
No-link referrer (mobile devices): increasingly, people access YouTube from a variety of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, internet TV, and so on). This tool refers to the number of viewers who are watching your videos using mobile YouTube apps. It shows the number of views on that were seen on m.youtube.com, (YouTube's mobile version of their web platform).
As a video content publisher who wants to widen access to your content, you should ensure that your video is mobile-friendly in format, file size, and picture quality. If more people are watching your video via mobile devices than on a desk-top, this data will guide you on how you produce your future videos and the level of investment you want to make on appropriate technology & equipment.
No-link referrers - YouTube watch and Channel pages: this feature means that YouTube has no information on the links which drove your viewer to your video. The viewer has arrived through a private word-of-mouth route rather than making the journey through traceable prompts. So if your video has been shared by someone cutting and pasting the URL into a number of locations including a browser address, Skype (or another instant messaging platform), or an email, YouTube will be unable to track the virtual trail of the route taken.
In terms of extrapolating information, the figures should at least provide an indication to what degree your video has reached viral popularity.
Using the tools that YouTube has provided can offer you a great deal of useful information which you can use to create effective marketing campaigns, boost your search rankings, and create videos appropriate to the platform your viewers are watching from. The second article in this two-part series looks at further analytical tools that YouTube provides (How To Understand Analytics On YouTube: Using Traffic Source Information To Improve Your Efficiency, Part 2).

Sumi Olson (author of the Amazon five-star rated, "How to Manage Your Social Media Marketing in 30 Minutes A Day"), is an author, speaker, diamond-rated article writer, consultant and trainer on social media, content creation strategies, and business development.
With 25 years' experience in book publishing, business development, online selling, sales & marketing, Sumi is committed to reducing overwhelm and turning insights into implementation. Through speaking events,books, programmes & workshops, she helps you further your publishing or writing aspirations, meet sales, marketing & management objectives, or master social media & online branding.