YouTube claims ads “more effective than TV”
April 20, 2016
Google says advertisers should massively increase the amount they spend on YouTube ads as they are ‘more effective than TV ads’.
Matt Brittin, Google’s senior European represenative, says a report analysing campaigns across eight countries shows that in 80 per cent of cases YouTube ads were far more effective than TV ads in driving sales.
Google’s analysis of 56 case studies, carried out by a range of research partners, suggests advertisers should be allocating up to six times more of their budget to YouTube than they currently do, reports the Guardian.
“We found that while TV maintains a powerful impact in the digital age, digital video is under-invested in several categories we measured in the UK, France and Germany,” said Lucien van der Hoeven, general manager EMEA at MarketShare, one of the companies hired to conduct the analysis.
The report, “The (Entertainment) Revolution will not be Televised” is to be unveiled at the Advertising Week Europe festival. Getting it retaliation in first, Thinkbox, the TV marketing body said the YouTube analysis “misses the point” of TV advertising. “The true value of TV advertising is not just its return on investment [getting people to buy stuff], but that it achieves the best return on investment at the highest levels of investment,” said research and planning director Matt Hill. “TV builds brands better than anything else and creates the most profit.”
Thinkbox said that if brands did increase their spend on YouTube significantly, it would backfire; it claims the bulk of viewing on the site is by a relatively small audience, and that YouTube is mostly lower-value user-generated content and not the top-quality drama and entertainment programmes advertisers want to associate with.