YouTube launches Promoted Videos outside the U.S.

How can you reach a wider audience and attract attention to your video on YouTube? Mind you, you’re competing with 20 hours of fresh, new footage that gets uploaded to the site every minute.

The most popular video site in the planet has just launched a new ad format, currently available in the U.K., France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands– YouTube Promoted Videos. The new ad format allows for advertisers to choose, through the AdWords interface, a promoted video ad template so that when a YouTube viewer clicks on your promotion, they see your video. You only pay when people click to see your video – not when people see your promotion.

The YouTube Promoted Video ad option consists of a thumbnail on the left and three lines of text on the right. When a user clicks on a video ad, he/she will be taken to the YouTube page or channel with the video. Any user can promote ads on YouTube for just a few dollars a day, though most of the promotions on the site are run by larger organizations.

According to Nielsen, online video streaming is growing slowly but surely. This September, total video streams increased 24.8% compared to 11.2 billion streams in the same period last year. YouTube in particular leads over 50% of all video streams in the U.S., a total of 6.7 billion streams.

Just like sponsored links on Google, advertisers will be able to pay for their Promoted Video when users click on the ad. In addition, advertisers will also be able to add a ‘call-to-action’ clickable overlay on videos to engage people and drive them to their websites.

Watch the YouTube Promoted Video presentation:

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Video Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.