YouTube offers marketers two ways to promote their brand. The first is to place commercials in front of videos through a program called TrueView. Viewers can skip the ads after five seconds, and marketers only pay if the full ad is aired. Completion rates range from 15 to 45 percent, according to a YouTube spokeswoman.
The other way brands can leverage YouTube is by developing their own content. That ranges from sponsorships, to brand channels with how-to videos, quirky user-generated content and excursions into the tricky space of short-form online entertainment. While more difficult to quantify returns on investment, the possibility of going viral makes it a gamble worth taking for a growing number of marketers.
Lecinski cautioned against chasing "lightning in a bottle" by creating viral content in favor of strategic planning, but marketers at the YouTube event are pursuing both.
In addition to running pre-roll advertising, Madison, Wis.-based American Family Insurance created its own YouTube channel several years ago with "Stand Up For Family," drawing some 4 million views to date. It sponsored a live comedy show in Atlanta three years ago, chopped it up into small, digestible bits, and packaged it as a video series. There's a stage and screen logo throughout and a call to action at the end, instructing viewers to go to American Family's website for their insurance needs.
American Family repositioned itself with new creative in 2011, but at a budget of $94 million, spent a fraction of what Geico, State Farm, Allstate and Progressive did on measured media, according to Kantar Media. Creative use of YouTube is an integral part of American Family's marketing strategy, according to Telisa Yancy, director of advertising.
"I think the trick from a marketing standpoint is to do what is organic and natural and authentic for you as a company, and for your consumer," Yancy said. "You may not be in the market for insurance today, but you might be interested in some good family-centric comedy material, and perhaps that can help to build my brand presence and perception to you as a consumer.
"Braun has also carved out a niche on YouTube with a channel featuring everything from polished commercials to demonstration videos on how to create edgy beard styles, drawing nearly 4.5 million views. But it was a well-executed parody video that put the channel on the map.
"We had someone make a viral video for us through a project," said Michael Leger, director of communications planning at Starcom MediaVest Group in Chicago, whose clients include Procter & Gamble's Braun shavers. "We never know if it's going to go viral. We just knew we really liked this video.
"In October, Braun partnered with Tongal, a crowdsourcing creative site, offering $20,500 in prize money for the best video. Los Angeles-based director Mike Goubeaux won the competition, and a $10,000 prize, with a humorous 1:20 video called "Braun — That's Tough." A lab testing parody, the video pulled in 2.1 million views before it was taken down at the end of December. While paid ads, including YouTube TrueView, accounted for the majority of the views, 40 percent came to the video through Internet word-of-mouth, according to Leger.
"We were very, very happy, as was the client," Leger said.
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