New YouTube Shoppable Videos + Awesome Stuff Week Channel
YouTube Shoppable Videos Promise Benefits For Both Brands And Content Creators. Is It A Gamechanger Or Will It Flop?
With YouTube’s new Shopping Ads, every YouTube content creator can now make their video “shoppable.” On September 29, 2015, YouTube announced on their official Google AdWords blog their latest ad development after assessing the significant growth of channels and videos featuring product reviews (up 40% as cited by Wired magazine). To better connect advertisers with top YouTube influencers and shorten the path to purchase, YouTube’s new Shopping Ads overlay an icon over each video that redirects viewers to an advertiser’s external site when clicked.
Promoting YouTube Shoppable Videos With Top YouTubers On New “Awesome Stuff Week” Channel
In an effort to promote and raise awareness for the new YouTube Shoppable Videos, YouTube launched their new channel “Awesome Stuff Week” Monday October 5th complete with a blog post explainer on the official YouTube blog. YouTube cites Think With Google case studies to support the importance of how YouTube product reviews influence purchase decisions and to provide the specific “I-Want-To-Buy” point solution (Step 4 here in their case study) with YouTube Shoppable Videos.
With Awesome Stuff Week (ASW), YouTube partnered with several of its top YouTube influencers including GiGiGorgeous, iJustine, UnboxTherapy, and rising star sneakerhead, Brad Hall, to not only promote products as part of their usual product review style videos but also to clue fans in on YouTube new Shopping Ad.
Here in his typical tongue-in-cheek manner, YouTuber Brad Hall makes an announcement of his own: “l am officially an influencer. YouTube reached out to me and asked me to participate on Tuesday Reviewsday during Awesome Stuff Week.”
How YouTube Shoppable Videos Could Backfire With YouTubers
Though YouTube’s new Shopping Ads provide brands and advertisers a new way to reach consumer audiences, it could be a big miss with some brands and many YouTubers. Here are a few foreseeable ways on how YouTube Shoppable Videos may not gain the user traction it’s hoping for:
- Affiliate revenue vs. Shopping Ad revenue – many top YouTubers maintain great longstanding affiliate sponsorships where fans can enter customized promo codes or click through on a specific URL link provided in the video description box. If enabled, Shopping Ads would divert and offset traffic towards paid advertisers in Google’s merchant account.
- Brand Sponsorships vs. CPC Payout – Shopping Ads represent the next step in YouTube’s push to eliminate advertisers outside of Google’s own sales teams. Earlier this year, Digiday detailed how YouTube “quietly amended its ad policies to block ‘graphical title cards’ from sponsors aiming to promote their brands and products on YouTube channels, according to a revised FAQ document in YouTube’s help and support section. Video overlays of sponsor logos and product branding are no longer allowed — unless the sponsor pays Google to advertise on that channel.” For most YouTubers, save for maybe the top few, CPC payout (i.e. cost per click, the payment that YouTubers receive when a viewer clicks on the external link within new Shopping Ads) will not equal brand sponsorship deals.
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YouTube’s New Shopping Ads: What You Need To Know
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