YouTube Partner Manager Speaks On Building Successful YouTube Channel

Wish to learn how to Build A Successful YouTube Channel for an individual and a brand? So what are you waiting for? Develop an understanding on the same through the below webinar led by Aditi Rajvanshi, YouTube Partner Manager and start building your own YouTube Channel now.

Webinar Leader’s Profile:

Aditi Rajvanshi, YouTube Partner Manager, Content Partnerships at Google. After graduating from Hindu College Delhi University, Aditi ​joined Google and has been here for nearly 7 years. She started off as apart of the adwords team and moved to YouTube where she has been working for the past 4 years. Aditi is currently a Partner Manager at YouTube and is extremely ​passionate about her work. She is a product expert and works with dozens of YouTube creators across India.

Twitter Handle: @YTAditi

As transcribed by Digital Vidya:

Q- Any insights into YouTube marketing for healthcare sector, specifically pharmaceuticals?

A-  We have a lot of creators today who are creating content which is very relevant to health care. mDhil Health is one of the many names and tons of channel owners in India who are creating really high quality, health and fitness related content. There are synergies that a lot of brands would find with them. As we already know, medicine, pharmaceutical, health, fitness is like a huge sector in terms of sheer ad dollars as well. So, there are those kind of channels that exist today, there are creative opportunities to work with those channels. If there is somebody who has a specific interest in it, we can actually connect on it.

 Q- If I promote any advertiser’s video outside YouTube then how do those views count in the analytics?

A- All YouTube use on any video that is either embedded or shared or any other way as long as it is viewed in the YouTube player, it is basically the same video link that you are sharing. All videos get attributed back to the YouTube video that was uploaded. All the tracking of data in analytics whether it is views, likes, shares, all of that happens at an individual video ID level. So, each individual video URL actually tracks everything in analytics.

Q- If you want to get listed upon top in searches on YouTube, all the stuff that you need to do starting with keywords and all the related concepts like meta tag. What is the role of social interaction and how much importance does that hold in the overall ranking on YouTube?

A- Social is a key element and one of the key factors how ranking works. But, the top most factor when we rank a video on YouTube searchis actually a factor called watch-time, followed very closely by the views. Watch-time essentially is a measure of the quality of the view. For example: I could click on a video and I could get out of it in 10 seconds. It counts for a view but it counts for 10 seconds of watch-time, which tells that the video was not relevant to me. So, while the views may be really-really high but the watch-time of that video would be low, which is why watch-time is tracked followed by very closely with the number of views and then factors like: likes, dislikes, shares, favouriting, play-listing, commenting all of these are actually factors of interaction.

When you look at the analytics, then you can actually see that the engagement levels in terms of videos seen have been actually measured and that way you can actually figure out which videos are doing better for you etc. on social interaction and it is sort of intrinsic to the platform to encourage that kind of interaction with the audience that really proves your search tracking.

Q- I have my greeting e-card channel with over 1.3 million views till now, but very low advertising revenue. Is there something I can do about it?

A- You need to take-up multiple things that may be going around. First and foremost, there must be a strong partnership programme that would actually bring in huge amount of revenues. There are different things possible; one, it is possible that may be some videos you are using say the audio is not owned by you, for instance, there are a lot of users who create videos and use a song, which is of course not their content. It is thus possible that all your videos are not responsible for the monetization. It is also possible that you have not chosen to monetize all your videos yet.

Besides this, it is also possible that not all ad formats are chosen. So there are multiple reasons, pertaining to videos, texts, there are multiple kinds of video etc. There must be a possibility that one of the aforesaid were acting as a hindrance.  Ad formats, video claiming, copyright concerns are some of the prime reasons why your ad revenues might be really very low.

Q- Does it make sense to go with trueview ads on YouTube? Could you substantiate the various ways through which businesses can leverage YouTube?

A- How advertising works is that we are actually tied-up with ad words. So, if you are doing Google advertising and ad-words that is exactly how YouTube advertising works as well. So, basically YouTube gets all its ads through ad words advertising platform. Trueview ads today are the most successful ad format today. Trueview is the skipable ads that are displayed at the beginning of a video, where after the first 5 seconds, you as the user have the option to skip the ad and go straight to the video.

Now, why it is the most favourite ad format for users and global PAN India is because this is the only format that can be used globally. This puts the power to choose and decide in the user’s hand. So, this way the users feel very-very empowered.

Secondly, for an advertiser it is great because in the first 5 seconds, they get free advertising, thus ensuring free branding in the first 5 seconds. If that video gets skipped at the fifth second then they still have a chance of getting to see the brand and they do not have to pay for that video. So, from advertising or a brand perspective it is a great win-win. When we think of revenue share, where that becomes important is that advertisers are no longer creating plain vanilla kind of trueview campaigns. Instead, you see so many interesting trueview campaigns such as Dove runs some exceptional trueview campaigns and that is where YouTube advertising is changing so dramatically because the brands today are creating fun content and really interesting ads that are fun to watch, these days. So, the challenge is no longer there as we see very-very high click through rate (CTR) through trueview ads.

Q- What are the separate file formats for making good quality with small sizes? What is the length of video you recommend?  

A- .flv is a great format in HD. So, if you can create things at 1080p, please go ahead and do that because the advantage of doing that is that when you upload the highest quality video on YouTube, it also has a bandwidth recognizer. So, if I am watching that video which you uploaded in HD quality on a really low bandwidth connection, YouTube will bring down the quality of the video to still serve to me as a user. So, it is always advisable to go with the highest possible quality –1080p being the highest.

In terms of length of content, that is changing dramatically. In the past year and a half two, I have globally seen a dramatic increase in the long form content. Some of the channels like tvf, aip and so many other educational and informational channels are creating content that is 10 minutes, 16 minutes, 20 minutes etc., and people are watching it. So, it is no longer about what is the ideal length. If there is a video of 5 minutes that teaches you how to make great tea, please spend 5 minutes on it. But, if it takes 12 minutes to tell me how to make the best masala dosa, please take those 12 minutes. So, take a call from the content and not the other way round.

Q- How to get more views, particularly for educational institutions?

A- We have a lot of successful educational channels from institutes, individuals, teachers, educators of the whole nine yards. In fact of the channels is the IIT channel. So, the ‘nptelhrd’ has channels on YouTube and they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, hundreds of thousands of views on a weekly basis and that content is actually being viewed not just from here but outside as well.

One of the core components to actually think about the education is one –choose your target audience, second –where is it based, third –what is the language that you would need to be able to communicate with them and fourth what is going to be your teaching technique.  So, if these four things are taken care of then I think any educational content can have a great lifecycle on YouTube.

We have everything from kids’ content to the content that gives K-12 learning, to what crash course does to very high level educational content pertaining to IIT or IIM or Stanford or any of these top colleges. So, we have the entire range.

Q- How is YouTube fighting the fake views provider market and making it a more level played field?

A- We are very vigilant in terms of fake views provider. There are a lot of proactive measures around it. There are a lot of fake views that have come up over the last 4-5 years. But, they have been actually curtailed in a big way because our spam and views team went very vigilant on how we would actually be dealing with them. There are even times when we suspend a company permanently in cases we have tracked any kind of spam so we have become extra vigilant on this.

Q- If I have shared videos on YouTube channel and if I share the same videos on Vimeo, is there a way you get penalized for that or is it okay?

A-  Absolutely, it is completely okay. There is no exclusivity or anything like that. So, please feel free to do so.

Q- Are there any paid channels?

A-  Yes, there are paid channels. Last year in November is actually when we launched our pilot with paid channels. YouTube fundamentally is a free platform for content of all kinds and entirely ad supported. So, if you actually go to https://www.youtube.com/channels/paid_channels or you search for paid channels on YouTube on Google, you will actually get a list of them, wherein there are 60 or 70 paid channels in the list, largely educational. So, they have one-on-one hangouts on these channels paid channels.