Ads Worth Spreading

People use YouTube to create original content that will connect, inform and inspire others across the globe, and we encourage advertisers to do the same. It is our goal to recognize and give praise when brands create content that people seek out, love and share with others. TED, the organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, announced a similar mission late last year with their inaugural Ads Worth Spreading challenge, designed to solicit best-in-class ads that raise the bar, elevate the craft and invent new forms of engagement, both online and in general.

Beginning in early January, TED and YouTube began the call for submissions. In less than a month, nearly 1,000 ads were submitted from around the world, varying in length from 30 seconds to five minutes. The winners were selected by a diverse judging panel made up of 24 artists, business people and thought leaders, including Robert Wong from Google’s Creative Lab and YouTube creative champion Terrence Kelleman of Dynomighty. One-third of the entries came from outside of the U.S., across a wide variety of brands and causes.

In early March, Chris Anderson announced the 10 winners of the challenge from the stage of the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California. The winners represent some of the most creative, compelling and out-of-the-box executions of the past year. They embody a new paradigm for advertising creative, pushing the boundaries on what will move audiences and spur action by embracing longer-form storytelling as advertising.




Video is a powerful medium for spreading ideas. Our mission--like TED’s--is supported in part by advertising. Any great video--whether original content or advertising--should make you think, make you respond, and make you want to share. We hope to continue to see more enthusiasm and more passion in online advertising, solidifying it as the medium that elevates the craft and practice of brands spreading ideas.

The 10 winning Ads Worth Spreading are:

• Chrysler: "Born of Fire" (Wieden+Kennedy)
• The Nike Foundation: “Girl Effect, The Clock is Ticking” (Wieden+Kennedy)
• Dulux: “Dulux Walls” (Euro RSCG London)
• Intel: “The Chase” (Venables Bell & Partners)
• Nokia: “The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Character Animation” (Wieden + Kennedy London)
• Hornbach and HEIMAT Berlin: “Infinite House” (@radical.media)
• The Topsy Foundation: “Selinah” (Ogilvy Johannesburg)
• Batelco: “Infinity” (FP7/DXB, Bahrain)
• Savory Institute: “Changing Our Future” (Foresight Multimedia)
• Target: “Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular” (Mother NY and Legs Media)

The winning videos can be seen today on the YouTube homepage, and you can also take a look at behind-the-scenes commentary on YouTube Show & Tell, our resource for the best creative marketing on YouTube.

Mark Sabec, Product Marketing Manager, who recently watched “Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man”

Ad Blitz winner revealed

It's been about two weeks since the Super Bowl aired, but our ears are still ringing from the noise of advertisers jockeying for position in Ad Blitz, YouTube’s contest to find the best Super Bowl ad. Last Sunday, we added Super Bowl spots to the Ad Blitz gallery as they aired on gameday, and people could come to the channel (or even hop on their mobile devices) to vote for their favorites.

We’ve tabulated the final votes, and are pleased to announce that the winner is...



It was a great Super Bowl for mobile this year, with over 3.5 million views of the Ad Blitz channel happening on mobile devices. We received over 2.7 million votes, and in the first 30 hours after the game aired, commercials were viewed 47 million times.

As the winner of Ad Blitz, Chrysler will be featured in the YouTube masthead all day today. Hats off to them for being voted the top spot by the YouTube community.

Suzie Reider, Advertising Director Display, recently watched, “Steelers versus Packers - Super Bowl XLV and ESPN.”

Super Bowl XLV: fun facts about food, football, and ads

You may notice the streets will be exceptionally quiet this superb 'ol Sunday afternoon, with perhaps only a few pizza delivery vehicles passing by, as Americans gather en masse around the big screen to watch our annual football, food and advertising spectacular: Super Bowl XLV. Two storied teams from the heartland - the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers - will take the field to conclude an exciting and, at times, controversial NFL season. We can only hope the quality of the game will live up to the stage and hype.

A few fun facts to keep in mind for this Sunday's big game (6:30pm ET on FOX, btw):

• The Steelers have played in seven Super Bowls, winning six of them, while the Packers have been four times, winning three. (It should be noted that the Packers have won 12 total "World Championships" of professional football, eight coming before the modern NFL's playoff system)
• The Super Bowl attracts a ginormous television audience that, according to Nielsen Co. peaked last year at 106.5 million viewers, topping the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H" to become the most-watched show in U.S. television history
• Nine out of 10 of the most-watched television shows of all-time were Super Bowls, but according to The Wall Street Journal, of the several hours of Super Bowl programming including the game itself, only about 11 minutes will have game action, when the ball is actually in-play
• According to the Hass Avocado Board, an estimated 69.6 million pounds of avocados are expected to be consumed during the Super Bowl, and in general, Americans will eat more on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day besides Thanksgiving, spending over $55 million dollars on food
• Sunday will be among the top five pizza-ordering days of the year, with some chains accepting pre-orders for pies. Papa John's is estimating they'll travel 300,000 miles in total for deliveries.
• This will also be the first Super Bowl with no cheerleaders (!), as neither the Packers nor Steelers have squads

And of course, the Super Bowl is an advertising bonanza, with many people tuning in to see the celebrity-laden ads with absurdly high production values as much as to see the game. Besides paying to produce the ads themselves, advertisers are buying airtime from FOX at a rate of around a whopping $3 million for every 30 seconds, according to MSNBC.

Is it worth it? This is a question that you can help settle, by going to our Ad Blitz channel on Super Bowl Sunday to watch and vote on Super Bowl commercials. We'll be adding commercials from participating in-game advertisers to the channel as-close-as-possible after they air, so you can watch, compare, and vote on ads to your heart's content. Your voting will help determine the champion ad, which will be rewarded with a placement in our homepage masthead ad unit, along with the four runners-up, on February 19.

If you're looking for last-minute, Super Bowl party planning tips or recipes, you can check out the channel now for a variety of Super Bowl coverage, including this awesome recipe for Clams Casino Dip, from Foodwishes:

You can also access the channel and commercials from your web-enabled mobile device: go to m.youtube.com/adblitz from your mobile browser (or enter "youtube.com/adblitz" and you should be redirected).

Enjoy the game!


Andrew Bangs, Sports Manager, recently watched “Queensryche - Silent Lucidity.”

The ad your ads could look like: Looking back at the best YouTube ads of 2010

2010 was a breakout year for video advertising, which is an unmitigated good thing for advertisers and viewers alike. As audiences, platforms, channels, and devices continue to fragment into ever-more-specific niches, earning people’s attention has become ever more challenging. To find audiences and break through all the noise, brands must create content that people seek out, love, and share with others.

On the coattails of YouTube Rewind, which highlighted the most viewed videos of 2010 - we took an informal poll of our team and reporters in the industry to find out their favorite YouTube ads of the year. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) Old Spice "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" (25M views)



2010 was Old Spice’s year. Released to YouTube a few days before the Super Bowl, Isaiah Mustafa’s shower-transcending, horse-sitting manliness had already attracted a fan base before the Saints and Colts took the field. This new franchise culminated in Old Spice’s Twitter response campaign, attracting more than 100 million views in fewer than 10 days. Smells good!

Experts say: “The challenge for advertisers in social media is keeping up with the real-time nature of it. Old Spice provided the blue print on how to do this with a video blitz that perfectly fit with how the Web operates nowadays.” - Brian Morrissey, AdWeek

Lesson learned: Old Spice spent millions developing the character, and then took advantage of this brand equity by speaking directly to key influencers, who then got their followers to tune in.... for free!

2) Nike "Write the Future" (22M views)



Who was your favorite official sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup? If you said Nike, you’re not alone. You’re also not an expert on global sports sponsorships, because Nike didn’t sponsor the Cup. All they did was hijack world soccer with a glorious, 3-minute mini-epic directed by Alejandro Iñárritu.

Lesson learned: It’s hard to imagine a 3-minute commercial running during a major sporting event, but online it attracted an enormous audience that accelerated via sharing.

3) Tipp-Ex "NSFW. A hunter shoots a bear!" (13M views)



Vaguely reminiscent of the revolutionary Burger King Subservient Chicken, this campaign for correction tape product Tipp-Ex hands control of the story to the user, with dozens of funny outcomes that reward experimentation and discovery.

Experts say: "One of 2010's greatest examples of interactive ads." - Ben Parr, mashable
Lesson learned: Interactivity + video = a truly immersive, memorable, and sharable experience.

4) Hell Pizza, “Deliver Me to Hell“ (2.5M views)



Ads are definitely content when they include interactive zombie attacks. When you feature clever product placement and a narrative viewers can participate in, it's advertising gold.

Experts say: “With the increased sophistication of YouTube annotations has come a greater number of interactive adventures, and this branded experience sponsored by the New Zealand pizza company Hell Pizza is one of the better ones I've seen. Not only is it executed well, but a zombie comedy fits perfectly with Hell Pizza's brand -- and really makes you crave a hot slice.” - Liz Shannon Miller, NewTeeVee

Lesson learned: YouTube video annotations create new opportunities for fun, turning the video viewing experience into an adventure.

5) Toyota "Swagger Wagon" (7.6M views)



Awwwww, yeah. Decidedly un-hip-hop people rapping about their un-hip-hop lives is nothing revolutionary, but the execution on this campaign for Toyota’s Sienna minivan was a cooling salve for Gen X parents struggling to embrace the cul-the-sac.

Lesson learned: Perhaps the perfect example of a brand creating content that people will seek out, love, and share.

6) Toy Story 3, “Lots-o-Huggin' Bear Commercial” (1.2M views)



Experts say: “We loved Pixar's phony retro toy ads promoting Toy Story 3. The ‘Huggin' Toys’ videos were made to resemble toy ads circa 1983 -- complete with VHS tape static crawling along the bottom of the screen.” - Zach Rodgers, ClickZ

Lesson learned: The Toy Story franchise has been the most critically and financially successful animated movie series of all time, mostly because of its ability to appeal both to kids and to parents. Kids who grew up in the Reagan Years are powerless against the nostalgia appearl of this very convincing faux-retro spot .

These are, of course, just a tiny taste of what brands and agencies did with online video in 2010, and we didn’t even touch the best creative in other languages. We’re hoping this list gets people inspired about the creative possibilities.

Eric Meyerson, Video Business Marketing Lead, recently watched "Complete History of The Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris."

What makes an ad worth spreading?

Today we bring you a guest post from Chris Anderson, Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Anderson explains how TED and YouTube are teaming up to present a challenge called 'Ads Worth Spreading'.

Video is a powerful medium for spreading ideas. Over the past four years, TED has posted over 800 TEDTalks on TED.com and on YouTube. We've been thrilled to see the world respond -- watching the videos more than 375 million times.

Our mission -- of spreading ideas around the world -- is supported in part by advertising. And we believe that advertising should evoke the same emotions a TEDTalk does -- it should make you think, make you respond, make you want to share -- a great idea, a product that makes the world better, an initiative that might change the world. Like YouTube, we want to see the same level of passion in online ads as we do in our TEDTalks. So, we’ve created a challenge called 'Ads Worth Spreading' to solicit the best ads that raise the bar, elevate the craft and invent new forms of online engagement.

We invite you to enter the competition. Entries can be hysterically funny, stunningly beautiful, or just intriguing, fascinating, ingenious and persuasive. For inspiration, check out examples of great creative on YouTube Show and Tell. It is free to enter, the submission deadline is February 7, 2011, and full contest rules are right here.

We’re excited to see your ads worth spreading!

Chris Anderson, TED Curator, recently watched "Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man."

TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads

Advertising is what allows many of YouTube’s most creative video producers to keep producing their great material - it directly funds their creative process. And advertising is evolving. Increasingly, we’re seeing the distinction between advertisements and ‘regular videos’ blurring as advertisers start to make ads viewers want to watch.

We think that giving viewers a choice of which ads they want to watch means it’s even more likely that they’ll be engaged with the ad, and that advertisers will get their messages across to the right person. So YouTube has introduced a new kind of ad, known as TrueView Video Ads, which you’ll start seeing on the site today. It works like this: when you see an ad start to play, look for a 5-second countdown button that will allow you to “skip” it. If the ad doesn’t seem relevant or engaging to you, skip it and continue to the video you wanted to watch. Not every ad you see will have this “skip” option but we are working to bring you more choice and control in advertising where possible.


More compelling ads and viewer choice about which ads to watch (and whether to even watch an ad) means a more engaging, interactive, customized experience for both viewers and advertisers -- a true win-win for all.

If you’re an advertiser, please visit our InsideAdWords blog for more information on this announcement.

Phil Farhi, Senior Product Manager, recently watched “Danny MacAskill - Way Back Home”.

Longboarding around the world with YouTube

Today’s guest blogger is Scott Imbrie, CEO and Co-Founder of Original Skateboards. His passion is longboarding, a popular new form of skateboarding that also blends elements of surfing and snowboarding. Scott started Original with his brother, Brad, using YouTube to grow the business from scratch.


Update: As of December 1st, 2011, you will start to see Promoted Videos referred to as TrueView in-search and TrueView in-display.


From the start, Brad and I wanted to design longboards and trucks that would allow descents of the steepest paved roads in the world. Since longboarding as a sport was relatively unknown in 2002, we saw an opportunity to grow both our sport and business through online video.

In 2005, we shot our first video, “Longboarding Cadillac Mountain,” on Cadillac Mountain in Maine. With just 12 subscribers to our channel, we uploaded the video and promoted it through our MySpace and Facebook communities. We had no idea what to expect. The next day, we came into the office and found more sales orders than we had received in the previous week, including many orders from Europe and Australia.

YouTube had provided us global reach, which drove more potential customers to the Original website. Our total sales increased roughly 40% from that night forward. Seeing the impact online video had on our sales, we began to build our business with YouTube at its core. We added Nick Patrick, the director of Cadillac Mountain, to our three-person staff to shoot, edit and produce YouTube content full time.

To stay connected with our viewers, we began to expand beyond a single video. Our next project was an episodic travel series we called “Western Sessions.” YouTube featured the first episode on its home page, and we reached over 150,000 views, which was a record for us at the time. Our sales again increased by approximately 40%. Last year’s sequel, “Puerto Rico Sessions,” received 8.9 million views, making up over 30% of our total video views in 2009.

Our strategy to achieve those viewership numbers and increase our subscriber base has been through a combination of online advertising (primarily Google AdWords and YouTube Promoted Videos), creative print advertising and word-of-mouth. We found when we produce relevant, high-quality content, one in four viewers will share that video with a friend. This viral word-of-mouth sharing greatly decreases our costs (when we pay for video advertising) and has enabled us to grow our business on a very limited budget. Additionally, we are developing YouTube-based applications to help us connect even more effectively with our viewers.

While Original has more than 105,000 subscribers around the world, it remains very much a family affair. Brad and I continue to work together every day, and our childhood best friends are key players in our business. Moreover, longboarding as a sport has grown exponentially. The sport now receives millions of views per week on YouTube and has grabbed the attention of major newspapers and television shows.

We are thankful that the YouTube community supports our artistic expression and sport. It has helped open many new opportunities for our business.

Our latest video, “Go Longboard 2010,” is our interpretation of what we feel makes longboarding different from other extreme sports out there. Our goal was to make the most visually stunning nature video on YouTube, and showcase longboarding while we were at it. We hope you like it!





Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, recently watched “Longboarding Boston.”

Promoted Videos hit half a billion views

Update: As of December 1st, 2011, you will start to see Promoted Videos referred to as TrueView in-search and TrueView in-display.

When we announced our first performance-based video ad format, Promoted Videos, nearly two years ago, the first campaign was “Penny Pranks” by Office Max.

Since that time, thousands and thousands of advertisers have taken advantage of this ad format to entice likely customers with videos about everything from smoked brisket recipes to magnetic jewelry to sneakers. Politicians and political activists have used Promoted Videos to argue for a proposition or against an issue. And large companies have reached wide audiences with movie trailers, recipes, and ideas for Halloween.

This month we served the 500,000,000th Promoted Video view. Promoted Videos average approximately three minutes in duration -- it would take a single viewer 2,853 years to watch them all. In the past year, we’ve seen a more than six-fold increase in the number of times viewers have clicked to watch a Promoted Video. And more and more, advertisers are making ads for TV and YouTube that delight and entertain. In fact, many video ads reach over 1 million video views, offering everything from solutions for bad breath to candy bars and cars – some of which have achieved increased viewership using Promoted Videos.

We’ve made several recent product improvements to help more advertisers easily set up and manage campaigns with Promoted Videos. First, we’ve expanded the ability to set up video ad campaigns on ads.youtube.com beyond the US to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. For anyone outside the U.S., the campaign will be tied to your Google AdWords account. Secondly, we’ve added Promoted Videos into our Video Targeting tool so you can select specific videos for advertising against in addition to appearing against search results and related content on YouTube. Finally, with our Promoted Video API in AdWords in beta, agencies can now use Promoted Videos to manage campaigns across multiple clients.

We’re excited about this momentum and look forward to building on viewer choice when it comes to advertising. We talked at length this week with the guys at ReelSEO about Promoted Videos, so read on if you'd like to know more about our plans.

Jay Akkad, Product Manager, recently watched “The NeoCube 01”

Tricking and treating with Disney this Halloween

We’d like to welcome today’s guest blogger, Annjanette Isorda, Senior Manager of New Media Business Development at the Walt Disney Company. Annjanette works with Disney Consumer Products, a division that extends the Disney brand to merchandise ranging from apparel and toys to books, magazines and even food. Today, she shares her experiences on how they use their Disney Living YouTube Channel to engage fans and communicate about holiday promotions.

The Disney Living channel was born in March 2009 when we realized that YouTube could provide a great way to answer the growing demand for entertainment and information on Disney products – everything from bridal fashion shows featuring gowns inspired by our Disney Princesses to sneak peeks of our latest toys and tech gadgets. We’ve found that YouTube has broad appeal and, unlike virtually any other channel, YouTube videos allow us to tell stories that we couldn’t convey in print or other online media. We create original content that you can’t see anywhere else for YouTube fans and the active blogger community.

As we go into the holidays, YouTube has emerged as one of the best ways for us to engage directly with a wide audience. For example, Halloween is an especially fun holiday for us at Disney. To make this year’s festivities unique, we created fun activities for the family on YouTube. We produced a "Disney Store 30 Costumes in 30 Seconds" YouTube Halloween Sweepstakes and have also set up a Halloween Dress Rehearsal Party for families to show off outfits in person (and receive free prizes!). The Disney Living channel helps us easily bridge the online and offline worlds.

Additionally, Disney Living is tricking and treating YouTubers to three scary movie spoofs, inspired by the flicks The Shining, The Ring, & The Sixth Sense. These Ghoulish Greetings are short e-greetings made to delight and surprise our audience. We hope fans will have a laugh and be inspired to share them with family and friends and participate in our Halloween contest with a video response of your own. We’ll choose five lucky winners after Halloween to win a $100 gift card to the Disney Store. We will continue to produce content like this for our YouTube channel because it is a powerful platform that allows us to create value for our subscribers and audience.



Finally, our last advice to anyone else considering building a presence on YouTube: connect it to your other social marketing efforts. We always connect our content to our Facebook fan page and share it in our tweets from Twitter. We’ve promoted the videos to the YouTube community as well to help connect more people to some of our most popular content. We have found using a mix of social media and paid advertising helps us reach both core Disney fans and newcomers.

We’re genuinely excited about engaging with our fans on YouTube and carrying on the Disney tradition of inspirational storytelling. Stay tuned — there will be more YouTube fun as we move into this year’s holiday season!

Jacques Hebert, Google AdWords Account Manager, recently watched “Disney Halloween Spoof: Ghoulish Greeting #3.”

Individual Video Program, one year later...

What if Michelangelo had sculpted the David and that was his one and only masterpiece? What if Francis Ford Coppola had shot one scene of The Godfather, then called it quits on a film career? What if Jim Henson had only given the world Kermit the Frog, and then decided to become a plumber? Would you still want to see these hallmarks of creativity? Chances are, you would.

It’s been well over a year now since the launch of the Individual Video Program (IVP), which celebrates the very nature of rewarding the one-hit creative spark or remarkable moments caught on video. Some of the most well known videos run the gamut through rough-cut home video (“Jessica’s Daily Affirmation”), wonders of the natural world (“Praying Mantis Attacks Hummingbird”), or good old fashioned comedy clips (“Laughing Baby,” with 33M views). Here's one of our recent favorites:

What’s even more powerful than sharing these moments through video? Hearing how the lives of the people who have uploaded them have been changed. For instance, in one of the most heart-warming videos featuring a U.S. solider reunited with his dog after returning from Afghanistan, the earnings made from the video went to the local animal shelter where their pet was rescued.

Online video is evolving, and we believe there should be a place on the web where all forms of content are celebrated and brought to the masses. In fact, did you know that...

• YouTube has now enabled hundreds of thousands of videos to earn money?
• We’ve enabled international users from 11 markets to earn revenue from their videos?
• IVP helped thousands of YouTube users to become official YouTube Partners?

We’re proud to have our Individual Videos share in our business success, and plan to find more ways to encourage a diversity of video on the site.


Lin Shi, Software Engineer, recently watched “Cows, Cows, Cows.”

Tips for partners: LockerGnome reveals how he built his brand and audience

In our Tips for Partners series over the last month, we have certainly covered a lot! Beyond our suggestions, our partners have given their own tips on these topics as well. Specifically,

• Bettyskitchen discussed metadata
• ZackScott talked about annotations and playlists
• LinusTechTips gave tips on how to find your niche

Hold on to your seats. For our last post in this series about engaging with your audience, we’re bringing you (drum roll please...) LockerGnome (a.k.a Chris Pirillo) who’s well versed in how to make a hit channel, get more subscribers, and interact with his audience through social media.

Chris publishes a personal blog and lifecast and joined the partner program in 2007. Technology enthusiast and self proclaimed geek extraordinaire, you can’t help but be impressed when Chris gives tips on how to make a good PowerPoint or discusses USB Hub problems. Also, in case you are in need of some pet costume ideas for Halloween, Chris can help you out.



You can also check this video out on his Watch Page. Let us know in the comments section of Chris’ video if you have great tips to share on how to build your brand and audience or if you have feedback for Chris. We’d also love to hear how your videos have been impacted once you have used some of these tips to better engage with your audience.

This post concludes our Tips for Partners series. We have covered many important topics to help you leverage and build your own hit channel and encourage you to utilize all of YouTube’s tools and features to build the best channel possible.

We enjoyed hearing from our partners to find out their optimization tips, so we will be moving this initiative to the Partner Communications Hub and posting a Partner Education Spotlight on a regular basis. If you have a great optimization tip you want to share, let us know and we would love to spotlight your video as well as your channel!

Thanks for tuning in and providing great feedback. Here on the YouTube Partnerships team, our goal is to support and educate our partners on how to use various tools to better create and share content. That, in turn, gives you the power to do what you do best: creating videos that represent the Zeitgeist of our world. So if that means funny cat videos or how to make your house more energy efficient, go forth and prosper!


Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “Wedding Thriller”.

Tips for partners: Ask and you shall receive

Over the last few weeks in our 'Tips for partners" series, we’ve shown you tips on:

• metadata 
• annotations and playlists 
• finding your niche and using Insights

Our partners have given their own tips on these topics: Bettyskitchen discussed metadata, ZackScott talked about annotations and playlists, and LinusTechTips gave tips on how to find your niche. Now that you are ready for fame and fortune, for our last topic in this series, we want to focus on the YouTube community and how to build your brand and audience.

Help Them Help You

Think of YouTube as your big, extended family; a large community who wants to engage with you, share their opinion, and help you be successful. So help them help you. Use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Google Buzz to engage with your audience and let them know how to keep track of your different YouTube channels, social media outlets, and ways to contact you.

Use your referral headers to see what specific sites are your top referrals. You can see your referral headers through our Insight tool by going to ‘My Videos’ and clicking on ‘Insight’ under one video. Next, click on “Discovery” and then “External Links”, and set the date range. You can only see a breakdown of external links on an individual video, so make sure to review your top videos to see if your referrals are consistent or different.

An example of referrals for a video:

Customize your interaction with your audience based on your top referrals. If your top referrals are Facebook, Twitter, or Buzz, make sure to let your audience know via those mediums when your next video is live. If your top referrals are YouTube subscribers, post a bulletin to your subscribers letting them know you’d love for them to share your video with one new person.

To Do:

• Don’t be shy, push your content out there. Engage with your audience through YouTube, Twitter, Buzz, Facebook, MySpace and other social media through links to your channel and videos.
• Widen your reach. A huge amount of view counts come from embedded playbacks so take advantage of this and embed your videos. Share your video with blogs/sites aimed at your audience. They may embed your video because it reaches their target audience.
• Ask for subscribers! Subscribers can be the best marketers to push your content to different blogs and social media. Ask for subscribers on your channel, through your videos, or through annotations, and then ask them to share your video.
• It’s free to ask for feedback (just keep a thick skin). Make a video where you ask your viewers what they liked or didn’t like or what types of videos they would like to see.
• Look at your comments, see what your viewers are saying and feel free to respond. Also, through ‘Insight’ you can see the words most commonly used in comments of your videos. 
• Run Promoted Videos to get more eyeballs on your videos and drive community engagement. 
• Add your YouTube Channel to your email signature so your contacts are aware of your ongoing online presence and can easily access your channel.
• Two minds really are better than one. Collaborate and network with other YouTubers and amaze us with what you can create together.

Now is a great time to log into your account and check out your top referrals and make sure viewers know how to connect with you through social media. Tune in this Thursday (our last post in this series) to hear from one of our partners who’ll discuss first-hand how he engages with his YouTube audience and uses social media to increase his audience and build loyalty.

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched "Dude Perfect™ (Amazing Basketball Shots) - HD."

Viewers say 'You have our undivided attention'

How much television did you watch yesterday? A half hour? Three? If you're anything like the average American, you watched for five hours (according to a Nielsen study). Five. Hours. For some, that's 30% of your waking day. In truth, 'watching' is a relative term. TV often provides background noise in many households, and people are rarely focused on the content alone.

Contrast that to watching YouTube or other online video, and, as an advertiser, you might think twice about where your ad dollars are best invested. You want your money where viewers are engaged. A new study that Google conducted with Next New Networks and Magid revealed that viewers of web original content (think Funny Or Die, Machinima, or Key of Awesome) are 2.5 times more likely to pay full attention to online video than they are to pay full attention to the TV show they are watching. Advertising Age discussed the research in-depth last Friday.

This type of engagement makes sense, when you consider the very social and viral nature of web original content.  Let's say a friend emails you a link to something they found funny. Or you wonder if 'The Social Network' is going to live up to the hype. With web originals, you're in control of the content, and it takes a fresher, more topical format than mainstream TV. It is also a lot easier to devote your full attention to a 3 minute video than a 30 minute show. When people are engaged, they can also be educated, informed, and persuaded. They are also likely to share content with their friends. 23% of the YouTube sample said they go on to email video links to friends or post links to Facebook or MySpace. This is the new definition of word of mouth.



Similarly, when it comes to video advertising associated with web original video versus TV, web original viewing proves to be advantageous in several areas. Web original viewers are less likely to:

• Fast forward through ads (compared to those who watch TV shows using a DVR)
• Talk to other people
• Browse the Internet while watching 
• Do things around the house

Furthermore, the study indicated that significant proportions of web original video viewers take advantage of the medium's interactive elements:

• More than half read comments posted by others
• Nearly half rate the videos
• Four in ten share the videos with others
• Three-quarters say they use some means to tell others about their favorite Web original videos, with significant proportions using email, social networking sites, and conversation

If you're interested in more points of the study, check out Next New Network's release. This is further evidence that, on YouTube, you have the audience’s attention. What you say to them is up to you..

Rick Silvestrini, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched "Between Two Ferns Zach Galifianakis: Ben Stiller."

Tips for partners: LinusTechTips shares how he found his niche

In our series of partner optimization tips, we covered metadata with Betty from BettysKitchen, how to use playlists and annotations with Zack from ZackScott, and how to find your niche and analyze the performance of your videos. Now, we’re excited to have Linus from LinusTechTips show us how he found his niche with videos on unboxing tech products and how he uses YouTube Insight to track the performance of his videos.

It took Linus some time and multiple attempts before he found his niche as a “Professional Unboxer.” When Linus started his channel, he began to use YouTube Insight to figure out which of his videos were most popular. He realized he had found his specialty when he got thousands of views on his unboxing of the Radeon 5770 Direct X11 video card, which to this day remains one of his highest viewed videos. Since Linus joined the partner program in 2009, his focus has been making videos on product unboxings and reviews. He specializes in unboxing video cards, like the GeForce GTS 450 and the Radeon 5750. He also has a great line of custom t-shirts for the unboxing enthusiast. This one is a crowd favorite.



You can also check this video out on his Watch Page. Let us know in the comments section of Linus’ video if you have great tips to share on using YouTube Insight or if you have feedback for Linus. We’d also love to hear how your videos have been impacted once you have used some of these tips to analyze the performance of your videos.

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “Movie Trailer Proposal.”

Tips for partners: Gimme content (and then analyze it!)

As promised, we’re excited to feature a series of blog posts with advice and actionable suggestions regarding what has helped partners be successful on YouTube. By now, all your videos should have lots of metadata, and you should have added annotations to at least one video, or grouped a series of videos through a playlist. Up next, our third post is on the importance of finding a niche with your videos and then analyzing data to determine how viewers are finding your content.

As always, we want your feedback. If there are things we are missing, or other optimization tips you want us to cover, let us know via the comments section in this post.

Find Your Mojo
It is easy for us to say, “make great content!” We know that is ultimately what you are are trying to do with your videos. When you first start out, experiment with different approaches and topics until you find your niche. It could be vlogging, beauty tutorials, a character sketch...really wherever your passion takes you. YouTube gets over 100 million views a day, so the world truly is your oyster. Find your mojo and then cultivate your content.

Once you create and publish your great content, are you paying attention to your Hot Spots? Are you maintaining a schedule so viewers know when to check back for more? There is actionable data you can use in your account to tweak your videos to keep your audience coming back.

To do:

• Use Insight Hotspots to see if your video is hot or not. Do you see a full red thermometer in the top red corner of your Hot Spot video report? If so, great! If not and your video hovers on or below the “Average” line on the graph, you are not keeping your viewers’ attention.
• Edit your videos to keep your audience engaged. See where viewers are leaving your video, and determine why (and consider using annotations to keep users engaged).
• Use Insight to figure out how people are finding your content. Is it through search or related videos? To find out, go to ‘My Videos’ and click on ‘Insight’ for one video. Then click on ‘Discovery’ and under ‘Links Followed to this video,’ you’ll see top referrals. You can click on ‘YouTube Search’ to find tags viewers queried to get to your video, and then add these tags to your video to boost your ranking in the search index. 

How to find more tags through the ‘Insight’ tool:

More tags to add:

• Review YouTube charts to check out the most viewed videos, and how you stack up.
• Use Google Analytics to understand the source of your YouTube traffic. The better you understand your audience and how they find you, the better you will be able to produce new content, promote the discovery of your videos, engage with your audience and build your brand.
• Keeping a video upload schedule is important, and we encourage you to upload consistently. When you are starting out, a technique that has worked well for many successful partners is maintaining a schedule that your subscribers will remember.

Now is a great time to log into your account and analyze your data to make sure your tags are fully updated, and your top referrals are either increasing or changing for the better. Tune in this Thursday to hear from one of our partners who found his niche, and will discuss first-hand how he uses ‘Insight’ to make smart decisions.


Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “The Unseen Sea.”

Tips for partners: ZackScott tells it like it is

YouTube loves random weirdness, comedy bits, and cute pets. We also love when our partners make it really easy for us to watch one video after another through playlists, and when they catch our attention with witty annotations. In our series of partner optimization tips, we covered metadata with Betty from BettysKitchen and then we covered how to use playlists and annotations to easily direct viewers to your other videos. You can search the whole series under the label, 'tips for partners'.

Zack from ZackScott, does a great job creating playlists and also using annotations to call out interesting things in his videos, or to ask for subscribers and comments. Zack joined the partner program in 2008 and he tries to capture and show off real things he finds interesting or funny. He caught our eye with his clever videos about his cats such as “Kitten still loves Puppy” or his surreal spider videos like “Giant Kitchen Spider”.

We asked Zack to tell us how he uses playlists to group his wide array of videos and to shed some light on his best tips for annotations. We think you will find Zack’s tips as entertaining and enlightening as his video on, “Amazing Nintendo Facts”.

Let us know in the comments section of Zack’s video if you have other great tips to share on using playlists or annotations or if you have any questions for Zack. We’d also love to hear how you arranged your videos through playlists after watching Zack’s video, or share some interesting use of annotations that you have found!

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “Shark Surfer.”

Tips for partners: Never leave me wanting more

As promised, over the next few weeks, we’re excited to feature a series of blog posts with advice and actionable suggestions regarding what has helped partners be successful on YouTube. You can search the 'tips for partners' label to find the full series. As always, we want your feedback. If there are things we are missing, or other optimization tips you want us to cover, let us know via the comments section in this post.

We kicked off our series with information on everyone’s favorite topic: metadata. Our second post is on how to use playlists and annotations to easily direct viewers to your other videos.

Make it Easy to Watch More
Keep in mind this isn’t a first date. If users liked your video, they most likely want to see more, but they may not know where to go or what to do next. Keep them on the right path by making it easy for them to watch more of your videos without having to do any work.

To do:

• Annotations are notes, or call-outs you can use to direct viewers to take a specific action. Use them to link your videos together or create a menu so users can easily watch your videos without having to move to another tab. 
• Annotations also give you the freedom to be creative and interact with your viewers on a deeper level. Let viewers “choose their own adventure”, ask for subscribers, tell users what to watch next, or encourage feedback at the end of a video. 
• Create playlists. Playlists allow you to group your videos and they provide a simple way for users to be introduced to your content and re-watch classic videos. Playlists will also increase discoverability because they are indexed separately from search.

An example of an indexed playlist

• When you create playlists, organize them by specific themes to help viewers find the videos they are most interested in watching. Also, keep in mind that you can embed your playlists on a web page to further capture (and keep) viewers' attention. 
• Finally, if you remember our metadata post, when creating or editing a playlist, make sure to add appropriate tags and use all of the character limits as this will help users find your content. 

To avoid:

• Though annotations are a great way to link your videos and make call to action statements, don’t go too crazy. You can add as many annotations as you like, but when starting out, 3-5 annotations per video is a good rule of thumb to follow. 
• Avoid being spammy. For example, if a user expects to be taken to an official music video, don’t take them to your second channel instead. Don’t mislead the viewer. 

Now is a great time to log into your account and optimize your playlists if you already have them and create your first 3 annotations for your latest video. Tune in this Thursday to hear from one of our partners who’ll discuss first-hand how he uses playlists and annotations to increase views.

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “Valentine - Kina Graniis (Official Music Video)"

In the YouTube lab, promotion works

Remember high school chemistry? Beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners...aqueous solution dilutions? Alright, so maybe the recall isn’t as strong on the last one. Hypothetically speaking, our product teams have never left that lab. They’ve been hard at work, testing away to find what’s effective in getting your videos watched – whether you’re a partner or an advertiser.

This past spring, we looked closely at our promotion tools, including Promoted Videos, to see what would happen in the ‘petri dish of promotion.’ Our team selected 20 partner videos who upload fresh videos regularly and then we drove as many views to them as possible with a cost per view (CPV) of $0.03. Guess what they found?

Conclusion #1: Promotion at $0.03 per view increases views per day by 30x when compared to two weeks prior to promotion. Thirty times? That’s a steal at three pennies for each view.

Conclusion #2: Partners in the test got 46,000 subscriptions that were directly attributed to sessions with a Promoted Video click. The cost averaged out to be between $4-$6 a subscriber. In other words, promotion of content has a direct impact on growth of subscriptions.

Conclusion #3: Promotion of newer videos is far more successful than older videos. No ‘Aha Moment,' but the lesson here is to keep your content fresh.

Conclusion #4: Users are twice as likely to watch a second video by the partner when driven to the channel page rather than the watch page. Naturally, someone will want to watch more of your videos if you can get them where they can clearly select one. Getting that user to the channel page is half the battle. Investment in the channel once you have them there is the rest.

If our experiment had begun with the hypothesis that Promoted Videos drive views at scale at a low cost, we would have been proven correct. You make great content, so promote it. Big players on YouTube didn’t find success overnight, and we’re finding that - more than ever - promotion is key to getting your videos seen and shared.

Jay Akkad, Product Manager, recently watched “The Scientific Method.”

Tips for partners: Betty's recipe for metadata

Our partners teach us something new everyday, whether it’s about science, art or cooking. Sometimes they even teach our team YouTube optimization tips and how to better promote a channel. In a series of monthly videos, we’re asking partners to talk about their top optimization tips for channels and are kicking this off with Betty from bettyskitchen. Betty joined the partner program last year and makes cooking videos with simple recipes ranging from cheddar jack whipped potatoes to healthy and natural granola bars, which all have one thing in common: they are incredibly delicious.

We asked Betty to show us how she uses metadata to increase her discoverability, choose her tags wisely, and come up with the perfect title. We hope you’ll find her recipe for metadata just as enjoyable as her steps to make buttercream frosting.

Let us know in the comments section of Betty’s video if you have great tips to share on using metadata or any other questions for Betty. We’d also love to hear how your videos have been impacted once you have used some of these tips to optimize your metadata.

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “Baby Eating Watermelon.”

Tips for partners: Words, Words, Words!!

As a partner, you have probably asked yourself, “How can I make my videos more discoverable?” “Is it kosher to ask for subscribers?” and “What’s the most effective way to use annotations?” Well, after almost three years since the Partner Program launched, we want to answer some of your questions and offer tips on how you can use YouTube’s arsenal of tools to become a truly great partner.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll feature a series of blog posts with advice and actionable suggestions regarding what has helped partners be successful on YouTube. You can search the 'tips for partners' label to find the full series. As always, we want your feedback. If there are things we are missing, or other optimization tips you want us to cover, let us know via the comments section in this post.

To kick off our series, we will be covering the first and most important step to increasing awareness of your videos: metadata, which is near and dear to all of our hearts. Find out what YouTube defines as metadata and read on for ways to come up with new tags and descriptions.

Words, Words, Words

YouTube is the second largest search engine, so don’t get lost in the mix, let people find you. Our algorithms are good, but they can only read, they can’t watch your videos. So in order to properly classify your video and index it for search, we need your help.

To do:

• Have a basic understanding of how we index our search results so you know how we crawl and index your video. Use our tools to your videos’ advantage. 
• Titles, tags and rich descriptions (all categorized as metadata) will help your discoverability and increase CPMs. Descriptions can include up to 5,000 characters, tags can be 120 characters. Make a goal to use every one of these limits for each of your videos.
• The more words you include in your description, the higher your chances of being discovered by searchers, which means the larger your audience can grow, and the more potential revenue you can earn.

What YouTube defines as metadata:

• Use our Keyword Tool to expand on or update your tags. It will give you good suggestions for related queries. You can also check out the Google Insights for Search tool built for online advertisers. 
• Don’t just include tags upon video upload. If you have a popular video that continues to get views over time, update your tags regularly to take advantage of new searches. Online search behavior is always changing, so your tags should change along with it. 
• If you have a transcript available, make sure to upload it and turn on captions. This can help your discoverability as it will give us more data points to index your video.

To avoid:

• Users hate spam. Google hates spam. Spammy tags and thumbnails may help increase views in the very short term, but our algorithm will catch on and punish you for spam. Long term, you want your users searching for videos to find what they are looking for and to associate your channel with accurate information.
• Don’t repeat words in your description or title, this will not help you. Rather use different words and variations that users might search on to find your video.

Now is a great time to log into your account and check out what your metadata looks like and add some more tags. Tune in this Thursday to hear from one of our partners who’ll discuss first-hand how she uses metadata to increase views. 

Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched “Triple Backflip - 60 foot Rope Swing!”